Since the beginning of the year, immigrants whose residence permit applications were rejected by AIMA have filed 1,182 urgent lawsuits. They asked the courts to suspend the orders requiring them to leave Portugal while their cases are being reviewed.
The courts have already ruled on 532 of these cases. And this is where it gets interesting: only two lawsuits were upheld on their merits.
In other words, in almost every case, AIMA’s requirement to leave the country within 20 days remains in force.
At the same time, the Higher Council for Administrative and Tax Courts (CSTAF) says that many of the rejections have nothing to do with the substance of the cases. The reasons are often procedural: missing documents, failure to file the main lawsuit within the deadline, an unpaid court fee, or AIMA having already resolved the applicant’s case itself.
Since the beginning of the year, immigrants have filed 40,632 lawsuits against AIMA. Courts have issued rulings in 3,355 cases, while more than 130,000 immigration-related cases are currently pending in Portuguese courts.
