46,824 residency and asylum applications stuck in Portugal’s immigration office backlog nightmare

Life for those trying to get a residency visa to live and work in Portugal continues to be a nightmare as courts report that there are 46,824 applications for immigration and asylum stuck in a backlog.

The Lisbon Administrative Circuit Court ended last year with over 46,000 applications in the in-tray at AIMA – the State immigration body responsible for processing them – with outstanding processes 80 times more than in 2023 since the extinction of the former department SEF (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras).

According to the 2024 Report of the Administrative and Tax Courts of Lisbon and Islands, to which the news agency Lusa had access, last year 54,222 of the so-called 6th Type cases, related to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), were filed with the Administrative Circuit Court Court of Lisbon, when, on December 31, 2023, There were only 575 pending.

In 2024, 7,973 application processes were concluded, thanks to a special team composed of six judges (initially five) and four bailiffs at that court, expanded during the summer to 135 judges from all over the country, in conjunction with the Higher Council of Administrative and Tax Courts.

If immigration and asylum processes did not exist, the Administrative and Tax Courts of Lisbon and Islands would have ended last year with 14,118 pending cases, 1,929 fewer than in 2023.

“Were it not for the huge influx of 6th Type cases – Subpoenas for the Defence of Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees – the number of judges in the Greater Lisbon area and Islands would, in my humble opinion, be sufficient to meet requests to be given in a reasonable time, resulting in a decrease in pending older cases”, argues the presiding judge of the Administrative and Tax Courts of Lisbon, Antero Pires Salvador, in the report.

Antero Pires Salvador blames the current situation to the dissolution on October 29, 2023 of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) and the subsequent creation of AIMA, whose sole headquarters in Lisbon makes the Lisbon Circuit Administrative Court “the only one that is competent” to hear requests for summons to the agency and decide on asylum applications.

“If it weren’t for the ‘AIMA’ applications, which take up a lot of human resources, which could be used in other areas to improve the state of respective services, things would look brighter for the future”, says the magistrate.

According to the document, approved on Thursday, December 31, 2024, 91 judges (26 more than established in the legal framework) and 16 prosecutors (9 were in office in the four courts covering the area of Lisbon and Islands), including the two largest in the country in administrative and tax jurisdiction. On the same date, there was a shortfall of 23 court officials.