More than a hundred Asian immigrants have protested in Lisbon outside the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) over regularisation delays.
During this protest, the Asian immigrants condemned the lack of responses from the Portuguese authorities and demanded that measures be taken to accelerate the processing of residence permit applications, Schengen.News reports.
In addition to requiring “residence for all” some of the protesters also said that everyone should have equal rights and also held signs with various slogans, one of them being “We are all legal”.
As the Portugal News explains, this protest was called by the Immigrant Solidarity Association. Speaking for the journalists, the president of the association, Timóteo Macedo, called for more favourable conditions.
At the same time, Macedo also criticised the agreement that the government has signed to hire workers from foreign countries under an accelerated procedure.
Additionally, Macedo previously also said that the association had received a number of complaints from immigrants in Portugal, especially from those from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India.
This is not the first time that immigrants in Portugal have complained about long waiting times regarding the regularisation procedures.
In an attempt to make this process smoother, Portuguese authorities have taken a number of measures. However, taking into account the ongoing complaints from immigrants in the country, it it unclear to what extent have these measures been successful.
Portugal Launched Platform to Regularise Immigrants With Employment Contracts in January
Portugal’s AIMA launched a new online platform in January of this year to regularise immigrants who hold employment contracts.
As the authorities explained back then, the platform serves all those who were making contributions to Social Security of Portugal before June 4, 2024.
This group of immigrants are eligible to regularise their status via the platform. The new platform is expected to help speed up the regularisation procedures of foreign nationals in Portugal.
As explained by lawyer Klaudia Freitas, the new initiative also reduces the requirements that were previously stipulated for the residence permit.
Freitas said that before it was necessary for immigrants to prove a total of 12 months of contributions. In line with the news rules, Freitas emphasised that now is enough to have at least one month of contributions up to the stipulated date.
Portugal remains one of the EU countries with a large number of immigrants waiting to regularise their status. Authorities are yet to reveal the effectiveness of these changes.