The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) will even have to meet the legal deadline of 90 days to decide on requests for residence permits presented to them to ensure rights, freedoms and guarantees, under penalty of their directors having to pay fines that may be imposed on them by the courts, reported this Friday the newspaper “Público†.
The ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court, signed on Thursday by ten judges and written by counselor Helena Mesquita Ribeiro, determines the appeal by residence permit applicants to a legal mechanism called subpoena o for the protection of rights, freedoms and guarantees, which has been invoked in several cases and which forces the State to respond to requests that reach it within a period of three months.
Centered on the residency application of a Bangladeshi kitchen assistant who, four years later, remains unanswered, and who, thanks to the vulnerable situation in which he was left, does not see his family, who remained in the country of origin, since 2020, the ruling illustrates the inability of State services to respond to residence permit processes, which throw immigrants into a “life in hiding†, transforming them into – œ(…) easy prey for labor exploitation or even sexual violence (…)”.
According to “Público†, there was until now no consensus in the courts on whether applicants for residence permits could avail themselves of this more expeditious legal mechanism or whether they had to opt for precautionary measures to prevent the violation. enforcement of the law by the State.
The cases pending at AIMA already exceed half a million, as Expresso reported last week. To make the situation worse, 100 employees out of just over 700 at the agency asked to leave. The Government promised to set up a mission structure and hire more people to try to resolve all pending issues, which mostly include requests for residence permits, but not only that, there are also requests for family reunification, golden visas and many renewals.
