AIMA's Regularisation Drive Leaves Roughly 30,000 'Complex' Cases From a Near-Million Backlog

The emergency operation set up to clear Portugal's colossal immigration backlog has worked through almost all of it and is now down to a residue of about 30,000 files — the awkward, unresolved cases that the fast-track machinery could not simply wave through. For the immigrants still waiting on a decision, the figure is a double-edged message: the queue that once ran to nearly a million applications has all but vanished, but the cases that remain are, by definition, the hardest ones.

The clean-up was the job of the Estrutura de Missão para a Recuperação de Processos Pendentes (Mission Structure for the Recovery of Pending Cases), a temporary task force created in mid-2024 and folded into the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA — the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum). It was handed a mountain of paperwork inherited from the previous government: close to one million pending processes, spanning expressions of interest, residence-permit applications, renewals and family-reunification requests that had piled up as the old Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (Foreigners and Borders Service) was wound down.

What the task force cleared

By the time the Mission Structure formally closed on 31 December 2025, the government was describing the exercise as an "exemplary operation." The numbers behind that claim are substantial. The team initially identified roughly 450,000 manifestações de interesse (expressions of interest) as its core mission, and by December it reported that 93% of those had been decided. Alongside them, it had ruled on 72% of the residence-authorisation cases filed by citizens of the CPLP (the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries), 52% of the cases under the old transitional regime, and about 10% of the residence-permit renewals in its pile.

In total, the task force closed roughly 387,000 cases. Not all of those were approvals: more than 59,000 applications were rejected, a reminder that "processing the backlog" and "granting residency" are not the same thing. Applicants whose files were refused face a very different road — appeals, fresh submissions, or, in some cases, an obligation to leave.

Why 30,000 are still open

The Secretary of State responsible for immigration, Rui Armindo Freitas, has described the leftover cases as "somewhat more complex processes that require analysis or calls to the applicants themselves." In practice, that covers files with missing or inconsistent documents, identity or criminal-record checks that have not cleared, fees that were only half paid, or applications where AIMA needs to contact the person directly before it can decide. These are exactly the cases that a high-volume, standardised push is designed to skip over — which is why they are the ones left at the end.

With the Mission Structure now closed, responsibility for finishing them has passed back to AIMA's ordinary services, supported by a dedicated office in Porto that continues to handle unresolved files. The agency has also been steering routine business — renewals in particular — onto its online portal, where residence permits expiring across July and August can be renewed digitally and holders can pull a digital "proof of legal stay" certificate while they wait.

What it means if you are still waiting

If your case is among the 30,000, the first thing to understand is that it has landed in the "complex" pile precisely because something about it needs a human decision. The practical steps are unglamorous but important: make sure your morada (registered address), email and phone number on file with AIMA are current, because the agency may try to reach you; check that any outstanding fee has actually been paid and that the payment reference matches your process; and keep copies of every document you have submitted, in case you are asked to resubmit.

The wider backdrop is still turbulent. Immigration remains one of the most contested areas of Portuguese politics, with parliament debating tighter residency rules, and AIMA itself has weathered staff strikes and a steady stream of complaints over delays during 2026. But the raw arithmetic has shifted decisively: a backlog that was once counted in the hundreds of thousands is now a tail of tens of thousands. For the people in that tail, the wait is real — but it is no longer a wait behind a million others.