In a debate on the theme “New migrations and talent attraction”, Pedro Portugal Gaspar explained that the services of AIMA and the mission structure to regularise the 400,000 pending immigrant processes, together with municipalities and other partners, allowed it to go from “a thousand services per day to 6,000 in terms of response to users”.

However, this effort has an “absence and non-attendance rate of applicants in the order of 15 to 16%”, explained the director, admitting that these situations wear down the service.

These absences are due to the fact that many of the applicants have changed residence, do not have updated data or “are no longer here in Portugal”, explained Pedro Portugal Gaspar in the debate organised by the Portugal Agora Platform.

The lack of response from administrative services for years has caused many to give up their applications for residence permits and there are also delays in collecting documents already issued.

“We have a very large set of authorisations that are granted and that are not raised by the applicants,” said the president of AIMA.

At the conference, the president of AIMA admitted the need to “better match the demand and supply” of immigrants, with greater coordination with the economic sectors.

“Attracting talent is not just about seeking a doctorate”, but people who respond to the needs of companies.

Excessive bureaucracy

Present at the debate, the CEO of the Pestana Group, José Theotónio, criticized the excessive bureaucracy and regretted that all companies that employ immigrants are treated equally by the public administration.

“The big problem in Portugal is bureaucracy” and the “State has very little faith in companies”, he said.

In his view, “there should be certification of companies that already work well” with immigrants, a kind of administrative “fast track” for their labour regularisation.

Instead, the country has allowed a “pile-up of pending situations” that make it difficult to resolve the immigration problem in Portugal.

Especially because, he highlighted, “it was this accumulation of situations that led people to be exploited”.