AIMA Quietly Reopens CPLP Family Reunification Portal 72 Hours Before Lula Lands in Lisbon

Portugal's immigration agency, AIMA (Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo), quietly reopened its online family reunification portal to holders of CPLP residence permits on Saturday, 18 April 2026 — ending a freeze that had effectively blocked tens of thousands of Brazilian and other Lusophone migrants from bringing their children to Portugal for more than a year.

The move landed 72 hours before Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is due to arrive in Lisbon for a bilateral visit dominated by immigration and the treatment of the Brazilian community in Portugal.

What Changed on 18 April

From Saturday, holders of a valid CPLP residence authorisation can file a family reunification request through the AIMA services portal for minor children who are dependent on them. The applicant must already hold — not just be waiting for — their new plastic residence card; those still sitting on a paper comprovativo from the 2025 replacement programme cannot yet use the portal.

AIMA did not issue a formal press release to mark the reopening. The change was picked up by Público's Brazilian edition on Saturday evening and confirmed by the AIMA services site.

Why It Was Shut in the First Place

Family reunification for CPLP permit holders was effectively suspended from February 2025, when Portugal began a massive programme to replace nearly 220,000 CPLP residence titles. The old permits, printed on A4 paper, had lost their validity after the European Commission ruled that they lacked the biometric and anti-fraud features required of EU residence documents.

Throughout 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, AIMA channelled its capacity into the document swap, warning applicants that reunification requests would not be processed until the exchange was completed. In practice, that blocked one of the most common family-law pathways used by the 400,000-plus Brazilian community in Portugal — the largest migrant group in the country.

Who Can Apply — and Who Still Cannot

Under the Lei dos Estrangeiros, the base rule is that a non-EU resident needs at least two years of valid residence before applying for family reunification, with narrow exceptions: 15 months if the couple cohabited for at least 18 months before coming to Portugal, and no minimum waiting period for dependent minor children or incapacitated dependents.

The reopening on Saturday only activates the last of those three channels. Spouses, adult dependents, and parents of adult children remain outside the portal for now. Brazilian-Portuguese law firm Lamares, Capela & Associados noted last week that the agency has indicated that the other categories will be phased in, but has not published a timeline.

Applicants whose residence card is still being produced — or who were issued a comprovativo de pedido while awaiting biometrics — are told to wait. That excludes a non-trivial share of the 60,000 renewal cases that AIMA acknowledged earlier in April remain pending.

The Lula Factor

The timing is not coincidental. Lula da Silva arrives in Lisbon on Tuesday, 21 April, with a 15-strong delegation that includes the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Racial Equality, and Human Rights. The Brazilian government has been openly critical of Portugal's tougher line on immigration since Law 61/2025 narrowed the family-reunification rules and the Nationality Law reform passed on 1 April doubled the residency requirement for citizenship from five to ten years.

Senior Brazilian officials have told Público that "xenophobia and the treatment of the Brazilian community" will be on the table when Lula meets Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and President António José Seguro.

An open letter sent last week by Casa do Brasil em Lisboa — the main civil-society organisation for Brazilians in Portugal — asked Lula to press the Portuguese government on reunification, AIMA backlogs, and the climate of hostility around the new immigration laws. Reopening the portal three days before the flag-carrier plane lands at Figo Maduro hands both sides a concrete deliverable.

Reality Check

The portal reopening is narrow and does not undo the wider tightening of Portuguese immigration law that unfolded across 2025 and 2026. The ten-year citizenship clock is still ticking through Belém Palace. The detention window for undocumented migrants has been extended to 18 months. The Entry/Exit System is now recording fingerprints at Faro and Lisbon borders, lengthening queues on the Brazil-Portugal route.

But for the several thousand CPLP permit holders with a child waiting in São Paulo, Rio, Luanda, or Maputo, a portal that accepts their application is the practical difference between a reunited family this summer and another year of bureaucratic limbo.

What to Watch Next

• Whether AIMA publishes its promised timeline for reopening reunification to spouses and adult dependents.
• Whether Lula's delegation secures any bilateral language on AIMA processing guarantees for Brazilian nationals.
• Whether the agency can clear the remaining 40,000-60,000 pending renewal cases before the 15 June extended-validity deadline expires, preventing another wave of frozen reunification requests.

Sources: Público (Brazilian edition, 18 April 2026); AIMA services portal; Diário de Notícias Brasil; Lei dos Estrangeiros; Casa do Brasil em Lisboa open letter.