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More than
half of new immigrants arrived via expression of interest
More than
half of the residence permits for foreigners who entered Portugal in the last
seven years resulted from expression of interest processes.
By TPN/Lusa, in News, Portugal · 1 day ago · 0 Comments
In information sent to Lusa News Agency, a source from the
Ministry of the Presidency said that more than 400,000 of the 440,000 pending
processes at the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) refer to
expressions of interest, rejecting references made by the opposition that most
cases concerned mobility visas from the Community of Portuguese Language
Countries (CPLP).
In recent days, leaders of the PS and BE rejected the idea
that the expressions of interest, suppressed by the executive in July last
year, were the main entry point for immigrants.
However, according to the government, citing AIMA's
Migration and Asylum Report, "of the 440,000 processes pending at AIMA,
more than 400,000 correspond precisely to expressions of interest that were not
considered in the 2023 data since they had not been processed for several
years".
In this report, according to the government, of the 294,000
residence permits granted in 2023, "more than 50% correspond to
expressions of interest".
As part of the legal changes, "the expression of
interest processes (Articles 88 and 89, revoked by the current Government on
June 3, 2024) of CPLP national immigrants were converted to the new
regime", says the ministry.
On the other hand, "as they are processed, these more
than 400,000 cases will be attributed to the years in which they were
filed", says the government, which refers to the revoked legal framework
for responsibility for pending cases.
The foreign population residing in Portugal increased by
33.6% in 2023, compared to the previous year, totalling 1,044,606 citizens with
a Residence Permit, according to the Migration and Asylum Report, released in
September.
In six years, the number of legal foreigners in Portugal has
more than doubled, rising from 480,300 in 2017 to more than one million last
year. The end of expressions of interest, on June 4, suspended the legal
resource most used by non-EU immigrants to regularize their status in Portugal,
a process supposedly responsible for the 400,000 pending cases at AIMA.
It used to be enough to arrive with a tourist visa and start
working for an immigrant to be able to begin the regularization process at
AIMA. After 12 months of contributions to social security and finances and a
fixed residence in Portugal, it would be possible to complete the application
for residence, the first step towards regular settlement in the country.
With the end of this legal entity, the solutions for
arriving in Portugal legally involve work visas, job search visas or family
reunification visas, which must be issued by Portuguese consulates.
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