Immigrants in Portugal Will Soon Receive Their Social Security Number Automatically, No Office Visit Needed

Portugal is about to remove one of the most tedious steps in settling into the country. From the end of July, foreign nationals will be handed their Social Security identification number — the Número de Identificação de Segurança Social (Social Security Identification Number, or NISS) — automatically, without booking an appointment or queuing at a counter, according to reporting by Público.

The NISS is the key that unlocks formal life in Portugal. Employers cannot legally register a worker, and contributions cannot be paid into the system, without it. Until now, getting one meant a trip to a Social Security (Segurança Social) office to lodge the request, followed by a second visit to collect the number — a two-step ritual that the authorities estimate around 250,000 people go through every year.

How it will work

Under the new arrangement, the number will be issued automatically through the system itself, cutting out the repeat in-person visits that have long frustrated new arrivals. The measure is designed to dovetail with the work of the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, or AIMA), the body that has struggled with vast appointment backlogs since it replaced the former immigration service SEF.

For anyone who has recently moved to Portugal, the change is more than an administrative footnote. The gap between arriving, registering a residence and actually being able to start a job has often hinged on securing a NISS — and every wasted trip to a counter has meant lost working days and, for employers, delayed hires.

Part of a wider digital push

The automatic NISS is one piece of a broader digitalisation programme that Social Security launched in 2025, aimed at shifting citizens away from physical desks and towards online and telephone channels. Since the start of July, the institution has added WhatsApp-based appointment scheduling and video-call consultations, alongside a "declarations on demand" tool that lets authorised entities pull citizens' documents without a counter visit.

The strategy is partly about congestion. Portugal's Social Security and immigration offices have become notorious pinch points as the foreign-born population has grown, and officials are betting that automation can clear queues faster than hiring ever could.

There are caveats. Automatic issuance still depends on the immigrant already being in the system through a residency or work process, and the roll-out will be watched closely for the glitches that have dogged other recent government digital projects. But for the hundreds of thousands of newcomers who each year face the country's paperwork gauntlet, one of its more pointless hurdles is about to disappear.