AIMA Chases Reagrupamento Familiar (Family Reunification) Applicants Who Settled Only Half the Fee — Reminder Pings Land as Process Holds Mount Across the Pipeline

The Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum) — AIMA — has begun chasing immigrants whose reagrupamento familiar (family reunification) requests advanced after only the first half of the statutory fee was paid. According to Público's reporting, several applicants who lodged petitions during 2025 received reminder notifications in early June asking them to settle the outstanding balance, with case files flagged as on hold until the payment clears.

The mechanic is procedural rather than punitive. Lei 23/2007 (the Lei dos Estrangeiros, or Foreigners Act) sets a single taxa de análise (analysis fee) for reagrupamento applications, and the Portaria 1334-D/2010 schedule plus AIMA's own service charter require the full amount to be paid before the agency proceeds to the merits review. When the early-stage AIMA pipeline ran online ticketing through the Portal das Comunidades, some applicants were directed through a workflow that issued a partial-payment receipt without surfacing the residual balance — leaving open files that look submitted on the applicant's side but unfunded on AIMA's accounting side.

The notifications matter because reagrupamento sits at the centre of Portugal's most-contested immigration category. AIMA's 2026 caseload includes the residual pre-Mondragoé backlog inherited from the former Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (Immigration and Borders Service), the post-CRI integration of the Portal das Comunidades flow, and the live cohort of CPLP (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) applicants whose dependants are queuing for entry visas at consular posts. A held file translates directly into a delayed family arrival or a separation that extends past the one-year reasonable-period benchmark courts have been using.

The legal exposure on AIMA's side is also material. The Tribunal Administrativo de Lisboa (Lisbon Administrative Court) has, across the spring, granted citação edital (emergency notification) and intimação para protecção (urgent injunction) orders against AIMA in cases where the agency failed to act on dossiers that the applicant had treated as complete. A held file because the agency failed to invoice the residual fee in real time is unlikely to bar that remedy — the courts have been treating the agency's procedural omissions as actionable.

For applicants who receive a reminder, the practical reading is narrow. The notification names the residual amount and the IBAN to which the payment should be sent; once cleared, the file resumes its place in the queue at the substantive stage AIMA had reached when the payment shortfall was flagged. AIMA's published service standard remains the 90-day decision window from a complete dossier, though the published average in 2026 has run well above that on reagrupamento.

The reminder push lands the same week AIMA opened the Portal das Comunidades renewal channel for residence titles that expire in September and October 2026, and ahead of the parliamentary vote on the three-pillar Lei dos Estrangeiros amendment — which tightens student-visa entry, narrows the parents-of-minors track, and removes the tacit-approval safety net. Holders of reagrupamento files that pre-date the amendment fall under the rules in force on the date of lodgement; the reminder process does not change the legal regime applicable to those dossiers.

Anyone with a pending reagrupamento should check the SAPA portal's mensagens (messages) tab and the email registered with AIMA for the notification, and keep the comprovativo do pagamento (proof of payment) on file. Reagrupamento dossiers cleared at the residual-fee step rejoin the existing queue; AIMA confirmed the held files are not closed, only paused.