AIMA now started to count waiting times for residence permits for citizenship applications filed by immigrants in Portugal. According to local news reports, The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) is already taking into account calculating the waiting time for a residence permit in Portugal when calculating the deadline for applications for Portuguese citizenship, since the Nationality law came into effect April 2024.
With many people are waiting for more than two years to complete their immigration process, and ensure full fairness to immigrants and investors, who patiently waited, AIMA begins to incorporate waiting time for residence permits, into the five year citizenship applications.
Some Brazilians have who filed expression of interest in Aug 2019 filed with SEF (disbanded in Oct 2023 replaced by AIMA), have received notices from AIMA recognising the waiting time for the legal residence for Portuguese citizenship application. This proves new nationality law is already in place,. Article 15 (Section 4) of Portuguese Nationality law says legal residence period, counts from the date of filing Expression of Interest (EOI).
Latest new reports reveal, more than 420,000 applications for Portuguese citizenship stuck at the Institute of Registries and Notary (IRN) despite applying new AI technologies for analysing applications due to lack of staff. The citizenship decisions normally takes 6 months now stretches to more than 1 year due to backlog. According to a survey, Brazilians top among the foreign population, requesting citizenship in Portugal after 5 years of living.
The Ministry of Justice will examine applications and will take final decision on granting nationality. Online applications for Portuguese nationality must be filed by lawyer or solicitor. The Portuguese Government has unveiled a new nationality platform to register nationality applications online through a lawyer or solicitor, to further speed up the administrative process of citizenship applications.
AIMA’s new approach is designed to digitise and efficiently process all pending Golden Visa applications, with a focus on fully resolving backlog by summer of 2025.
To avoid unnecessary delays, AIMA has appealed to all persons with appointments at AIMA Stores to actually attend their appointments, on the dates and times designated in the notice individually sent for this purpose.
