“This month we will have the mission structure operating in 15 locations across the country,” said Antonio Leitão Amaro, at the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees.

In addition to the largest, which has been operating in Lisbon since September, the minister indicated that they will open immigrant service centres in Braga and Porto.

The service centres in Lisbon, Braga and Porto will be the largest, with the other service centres for immigrants being smaller and located at a municipal level.

The governor stressed that these centres will allow for the “tripling of the State’s service capacity”, going from 1,000 services to 3,000.

Highlighting the “relevant impact” of this mission structure created to recover the more than 400,000 pending immigrant cases, Leitão Amaro said that it is not a “legalisation option”, since only “those who comply with the law” obtain a residence permit.”

“It is an operation to regularise roles and for the State to comply with the rules it has set”, he said, stressing that it is about “giving dignity and humanism, but also bringing order because this regularisation mechanism or operation allows us to know who they are, where they are and what each of those people who are in Portugal do”.

In the commission, the minister took stock of the migration plan presented in June by the government, adding that more than half of the 41 measures foreseen in the plan “for a legislature” are “fully implemented”.

“Around 80% of a four-year plan is at the end of months very advanced,” he said, indicating that one of the “main advances” was the end of expressions of interest, a figure that allowed the regularisation of foreigners arriving in Portugal with a tourist visa and started working.

“This is over. With this decision, a number of 24 thousand applications for residence permits were presented, which means a comparable period of a reduction of around 80% in the flow of residence applications. This measure produced significant effects”, he stressed.

The minister also said that AIMA will be strengthened, “not only with a very significant increase in the budget allocation” for next year but also with “the reinforcement of human resources”.

According to the minister, there are open competitions that allow for a 13% increase in the number of workers by the end of the year and, in 2025, another 35%, “therefore increasing 85% in relation to current numbers”.