Outraged, Brazilians unite in protest against Portugal’s immigration agency

Tomorrow, in Porto, hundreds of Brazilians are scheduled to demonstrate against what they consider to be negligence in the care of immigrants by the Portuguese Agency for Integration, Migrations and Asylum (AIMA).

Brazilians accuse AIMA of not resolving the thousands of pending regularization processes since its creation in October 2023. The protest is planned to take place in front of the agency’s headquarters.

AIMA replaced the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) and took on approximately 300,000 immigrant regularization processes, 170,000 of which were Brazilians alone. These cases have dragged on for years without resolution.

However, according to Priscila Corrêa, a Rio de Janeiro lawyer specializing in immigration and organizer of the protest, the number of pending cases could be much higher.

— We must have more than 500,000 people there without a valid residence permit, because the title has expired and they are unable to renew it — Corrêa told Portugal Giro.

The projection sent to public security authorities indicates the presence of 200 protesters, with the significant majority being Brazilians. Based on this engagement, Corrêa plans to organize two more demonstrations in April, one in Lisbon and another in Braga.

Created in 2023, the residence permit for members of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) completed one year, and the documents began to expire without there being a decision on its renewal, according to information from the lawyer. These processes are accumulating alongside other pending ones.

— The CPLP appeared in February 2023 and was valid for one year. So, from March onwards, the majority of people who joined had their titles expired — said Corrêa, who created a petition.

Working with immigrants in Portugal for eight years, she shares that more than 600 people came to her office recently to try to renew their authorization in the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP).

With the absence of an effective solution for renewing the CPLP and other forms of residence permit, the government has adopted the document extension decree, which was established during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The challenge lies in the fact that the extension by decree is not mentioned in the physical document and has not been accepted by the private sector and even by some public administration bodies.

— The solution was to keep repeating a decree that extends the validity of the document. But now it is not accepted in many private entities. And in the government bodies themselves, such as the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT), which fines companies if they have employees with expired residence permits. The bodies do not communicate. It’s a general mess — declared the lawyer.

Corrêa predicts that there will be a new extension of the decree, which expires on June 30th.

— There is already talk of extending the decree, which came about because of Covid and four years later they use the same excuse. It is more than negligence, it is illegal, because it does not comply with the basic principles of public administration, which are efficiency, transparency and good faith. The worst thing is that new immigrants continue to arrive without those who are here being properly protected in their rights – she said.

When contacted, AIMA did not respond.

With information from O Globo