AIMA spread its appointments around the country. Now people are paying €300 to reach them
Slots are allocated by availability rather than by where applicants live, so an Almada resident was booked into Carregal do Sal, near Viseu, for an appointment lasting minutes.
On paper it was sensible. The offices in Lisbon and Porto were overwhelmed, so spread the appointments across the country and the queues shrink. That is what AIMA did. What the plan left out was the geography of the people being seen.
Slots are being handed out according to availability, not according to where the applicant lives. The result, reported by Jornal de Notícias, is people crossing half the country for procedures that take a few minutes.
The case that makes the point
An immigrant living in Almada, just across the river from Lisbon, was given an appointment in Carregal do Sal, in the Viseu district. He got as far as Coimbra by public transport and found no workable way to finish the journey. Missing the slot meant risking further delay in a process already dragging on, so he paid €300 for a private car to arrive on time.
He is not alone. The same reporting describes a couple handed three separate appointments, in three different places, for a single application.
If your slot lands far away
Rebooking is possible, but anyone who has dealt with the system hesitates: a new booking can push the date back by weeks, with no guarantee the new location is any closer. Before deciding, check the notice carefully to see exactly what the appointment is for — biometrics, document submission, an interview — because that determines whether any of it can be handled online instead.
It is also worth knowing the deadlines the law gives you. Renewals should be filed between 90 and 30 days before the permit expires, and there is a 60-working-day limit after which a renewal counts as tacitly approved. Official contacts and the booking portal sit on the AIMA website.
Decentralising the service fixed a genuine problem. What is missing is the easy half: matching the applicant’s address to the desk they are sent to.
Image: Vitor Oliveira / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
