Portugal Extends Validity of Immigrant Documents & Visas Until June 30, 2025
Portugal has extended the validity of documents and visas for immigrants for one year, until June 30, 2025. This extension aims to address the significant backlog in immigrant regularization, with the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) reporting 410,000 pending cases.
To tackle this issue, the Portuguese government has implemented several measures, including the creation of a mission structure specifically designed to handle the backlog. According to Schengen.News, the new mission structure will be responsible for analyzing and deciding on pending immigration processes, and will operate until June 2, 2025, with up to 300 people dedicated to administrative processing and applicant assistance.
AIMA President Luís Goes Pinheiro announced that the agency would hire over 100 additional employees to help manage the situation, although he acknowledged that this number might still be insufficient. He committed to addressing more than 400,000 pending cases by next summer, promising to resolve these issues by the summer of 2025.
In 2023, more than one million internationals lived in Portugal, the highest number ever recorded, representing a 130 percent increase from 2022. AIMA reported that 392,000 more people received residence permits in 2023 compared to the previous year.
