Finally, at least some good news about AIMA. The agency’s president, Pedro Portugal Gaspar, said in Évora that the number of complaints against the agency this year has fallen to roughly half the 2024 level. And that’s despite the fact that the number of requests has actually increased.
He describes the 2025 figures as “staggering”: more than 600,000 appointments and over half a million residence cards issued. At that scale, Gaspar admits, mistakes are inevitable: cards with typos, incorrect addresses. But the trend, he says, is downward — and “even one complaint matters.”
At the same time, AIMA is shifting some of its functions to local providers. Around 100 CLAIM centers (local migrant integration support centers) are now operating across the country in cooperation with municipalities, with another 50 or so run in partnership with associations and eight or nine based at universities. A new one was just opened at the University of Évora.
There is another explanation, though. The migration service employees’ union STM argues that there are simply fewer complaints because it has become harder to complain: emails go unanswered, phone lines are overloaded, and some offices are closed or operating with reduced capacity. The union is demanding that AIMA disclose the number of pending cases, average response times, and the actual capacity of each office. Back in August, the Portuguese Bar Association also raised concerns about the lack of communication channels with the agency.
So there is still a long way to go, and many of you probably have a recent AIMA story of your own — not necessarily one with a happy ending. But for the first time in a long while, the trend is at least pointing in the right direction — on paper, anyway.
