An agency that is not even three years old is about to get its third head. Pedro Portugal Gaspar, who has led AIMA (the agency that issues and renews residence permits — our hope and our pain) since July 2024, is moving to the board of directors of the Autoridade da Concorrência, Portugal’s competition authority. His replacement has not yet been announced.
Gaspar joined AIMA from the Directorate-General for Consumer Affairs and previously headed ASAE, Portugal’s economic and food safety inspectorate. He had no background in migration, and is now returning to the field of economic oversight he knows better. For those who have spent months trying to catch an available appointment slot on the AIMA website, it is hard not to feel that the agency turned out to be little more than a stopover for him.
AIMA staff see it much the same way. Manuela Niza Ribeiro, president of the STM (Sindicato dos Técnicos de Migração), told TSF that the agency’s heads “don’t even have time to warm their seats”. The union called Gaspar’s departure a sign of political disorientation and pointed out that immigrants are currently being blamed for just about everything, from a shortage of school places to queues in the SNS, Portugal’s public healthcare system. And right at this moment, the agency that is supposed to bring order to the system is once again being left without stable leadership.
Gaspar’s two-year record is a mixed one. According to an AIMA report, the agency issued a record 337,880 residence permits in 2025, up 54.8% from the previous year. Behind that figure are hundreds of thousands of people who finally received their documents after years of backlogs. But there is a “but”. In the same year, the number of notices to leave the country voluntarily was 52 times higher, while the number of new residence permits issued through family reunification fell by 61% over two years. I probably don’t need to explain that behind those percentages are families still waiting to be reunited, or people effectively unable to leave Portugal while they wait for their cards.
STM is calling for the urgent appointment of a director with experience in migration, stronger technical teams and a higher professional status for AIMA staff. The union also has a more immediate interest: AIMA employees are seeking the same salary supplements that the government granted to the police. If the ministry does not respond to its request for an urgent meeting, the union is promising to step up protests. And possibly go on strike, too. Wonderful.
If your case is currently with AIMA, there is nothing you need to do. A change of leadership does not cancel applications that have already been submitted or change the rules: those are determined by law and by the government. But a transition period at a government agency usually means a few months when internal decisions are put on hold, so stock up on patience.
We’ll let you know who is appointed to replace Gaspar as soon as it becomes known.
