In information sent to Lusa News Agency, a source from the Ministry of the Presidency said that more than 400,000 of the 440,000 pending processes at the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) refer to expressions of interest, rejecting references made by the opposition that most cases concerned mobility visas from the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP).

In recent days, leaders of the PS and BE rejected the idea that the expressions of interest, suppressed by the executive in July last year, were the main entry point for immigrants.

However, according to the government, citing AIMA's Migration and Asylum Report, "of the 440,000 processes pending at AIMA, more than 400,000 correspond precisely to expressions of interest that were not considered in the 2023 data since they had not been processed for several years".

In this report, according to the government, of the 294,000 residence permits granted in 2023, "more than 50% correspond to expressions of interest".

As part of the legal changes, "the expression of interest processes (Articles 88 and 89, revoked by the current Government on June 3, 2024) of CPLP national immigrants were converted to the new regime", says the ministry.

On the other hand, "as they are processed, these more than 400,000 cases will be attributed to the years in which they were filed", says the government, which refers to the revoked legal framework for responsibility for pending cases.

The foreign population residing in Portugal increased by 33.6% in 2023, compared to the previous year, totalling 1,044,606 citizens with a Residence Permit, according to the Migration and Asylum Report, released in September.

In six years, the number of legal foreigners in Portugal has more than doubled, rising from 480,300 in 2017 to more than one million last year. The end of expressions of interest, on June 4, suspended the legal resource most used by non-EU immigrants to regularize their status in Portugal, a process supposedly responsible for the 400,000 pending cases at AIMA.

It used to be enough to arrive with a tourist visa and start working for an immigrant to be able to begin the regularization process at AIMA. After 12 months of contributions to social security and finances and a fixed residence in Portugal, it would be possible to complete the application for residence, the first step towards regular settlement in the country.

With the end of this legal entity, the solutions for arriving in Portugal legally involve work visas, job search visas or family reunification visas, which must be issued by Portuguese consulates.