Inês Azevedo raises the alarm over serious failings at AIMA in the protection of foreign nationals' rights

Inês Azevedo, counsel at Morais Leitão, has authored the article "AIMA Cannot Be 'As Good as It Gets'", published in Observador, in which she warns of the serious impact that the agency's systematic delays are having on the lives of foreign nationals and on Portuguese companies that rely on foreign labour.

Inês Azevedo highlights the economic weight of immigration in Portugal — foreign nationals account for 20% of all Social Security contributors, equivalent to more than three billion euros — and warns that the European Commission has already cautioned Portugal that a reduction in immigrants will jeopardise the sustainability of the Social Security system.

To illustrate the scale of the problem, Inês Azevedo presents three concrete cases: an 85-year-old Dutch national who has lived in Portugal for over four decades and has been unable to renew her residence permit for two years; a Brazilian child who has been attending a Portuguese school for three years without yet having received her residence permit through family reunification; and a Filipino national who, after waiting four years for a biometrics appointment, had it cancelled by AIMA in the early hours of the very day it was scheduled, due to a public service discretionary holiday.

The Morais Leitão counsel calls directly on the Prime Minister to reopen the Mission Structure and process the thousands of pending cases, and advocates for the digitalisation of AIMA's processes to be coordinated through ARTE — the Agency for the Technological Reform of the State, I.P.

Read the full article on the Observador website.