Rui Armindo Freitas
Portugal's assistant secretary of state for immigration, overseeing the AIMA case backlog.
AIMA, the immigration agency Rui Armindo Freitas oversees, can miss its 60-day renewal Deadline without a permit issuing by default since 11 September, ten weeks after Freitas said its inherited backlog was down to 30,000 cases.
Last refreshed: 3 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Has Portugal actually cleared its million-case immigration backlog?
Timeline for Rui Armindo Freitas
Mentioned in: Portugal axes tacit renewal of permits
Nomads & Communitiesreported the AIMA backlog down to 30,000 cases
Nomads & Communities: Portugal cuts AIMA backlog to 30,000Background
Rui Armindo Freitas is Portugal's assistant secretary of state for the presidency and immigration in the XXV Constitutional Government, with ministerial tutelage over AIMA (Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo), the agency that decides residence permits.
AIMA wound up its formal Mission Structure at the end of 2025 and left its Porto office to carry the tail of the backlog. Freitas's count of 30,000 remaining cases, given on 1 July 2026, is the government's headline figure for that clean-up. D8 digital-nomad Visa applicants were waiting nine months for a residence card in early June 2026, so the queue bears directly on remote workers moving to Portugal.
His brief now sits inside a changed legal frame. July brought cabinet approval for dedicated immigration courts, and from 11 September permit renewals no longer default to approval when AIMA runs late.
Freitas says the backlog is nearly cleared
On 1 July Freitas said just 30,000 cases remained from the roughly one million files his government inherited at AIMA, Portugal's immigration and asylum agency. He gave no breakdown by Visa type, set no new Deadline, and described what was left as complex files needing further analysis or contact with applicants.
That claim now faces a harder test. Since 11 September, under Lei 62/2026, a renewal is no longer deemed granted when AIMA misses its 60-day Deadline, so applicants facing silence must sue in administrative courts already holding 152,000 pending cases. For the minister answerable for the agency, the measure of the backlog shifts from files counted in Porto to suits filed in court.