According to a report by the Público, several immigrants have been complaining about service failures from SEF and the inability to make an appointment.

On social media, one person claims that, in just one day, he tried to make 1,500 phone calls to get one of these vacancies, without success, and an immigrant claims that he needed to make more than 30,000 calls to get an appointment.

According to Público, a source from the SEF said that appointments are mostly made through the Contact Center, from Monday to Friday, with 50 employees and service is available in 21 languages. The daily average has been around 3,000 calls per day, more than 524,000 since January.

SEF adds that, since the beginning of the year, 215,000 processes have been opened for various subjects and, in recent days, in addition to 15,184 processes for family reunification and 13,624 for the granting of a residence permit, 13,624 were opened for a residence card of family member of a citizen of the European Union.

SEF has assured Público, that thousands of new openings will be made available for the renewal of residence permits, renewal of golden visas, extension of stay, issuance of a duplicate, and the alteration of data and credentials.

Público questioned SEF about how it intends to fill the gaps in attendance and how the restructuring process is affecting this process, but there was no response.

Lawyer Filipa Costa, who belongs to a group of lawyers that created an association to contest the fact that the appointments for residence permits for work are not made in chronological order, assures that she has been calling for three consecutive days SEF, from eight in the morning to eight at night, and so far has not one call has been answered. "The system is arbitrary and unfair because, once again, we can have someone who has just arrived in Portugal being put ahead of someone who has been waiting for years," she told Público.