Key figures — as of 2026-08-24: Bar Association delegation visited AIMA's Anjos office in Lisbon on 19 August 2026 — confirmed lawyers' complaints "point by point" — since a September 2024 task force, AIMA cleared most of a 900,000-case backlog, yet agency capacity problems persist — Bar Association president João Massano is demanding a dedicated lawyer channel and investment in AIMA's IT platform.
A Formal Complaint, Not a One-Off Gripe
Portugal's Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados) has gone public with a direct accusation: AIMA's staffing and technology failures are compromising the legal defence of migrants with pending cases. The claim follows a fact-finding visit by an OA delegation to AIMA's Anjos service point in Lisbon on 19 August 2026, and it lands as more than a complaint about slow bureaucracy — it's a warning about due process.
The Bar Association has warned that staff shortages, inadequate digital systems and inconsistent procedures at AIMA are obstructing lawyers and jeopardising immigrants' right to an effective defence. The findings followed a visit by a Bar Association delegation to the Lisbon office of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum in Anjos on August 19.
Bastonário João Massano didn't soften the language. Massano said the visit had confirmed "point by point" the difficulties reported by lawyers dealing with the agency. These include long queues and "disproportionate waiting times" – forcing lawyers to arrive in the early hours and remain at AIMA offices for extended periods.
What Lawyers Say Is Actually Broken
The complaints go beyond queueing. Massano criticised the "extensive queues and disproportionate waiting times in serving lawyers, which force early-morning travel and prolonged stays at the facilities" and the failure to update the institution's online portal, which "continues to provide incorrect, incomplete or outdated information."
Case tracking is a particular sore point. Massano added that it is "extremely difficult to determine who is responsible for each case and at what stage of processing it stands," which undermines proper management of applicants' expectations, and he criticised the "marked disparity and lack of standardisation of procedures between different AIMA offices," which generates legal uncertainty.
Perhaps the most telling detail for foreign residents watching this from the outside: much of the wasted effort isn't even about substantive legal arguments. Many visits were made solely to check the progress of a case or update an email address. That's not a defence being mounted — it's an administrative dead end that a functioning online portal should handle in minutes.
What the Bar Association Wants
Massano's demands are specific: a standing communication channel between AIMA and the profession, plus real investment in both staffing and the agency's IT backbone. Massano called for a permanent channel of communication between AIMA and the Bar Association, alongside investment in staffing and the agency's IT platform. He was blunt about the payoff: "The effect would be immediate: fewer queues, fewer early mornings and less pressure on the offices, starting with Anjos," he said.
The OA isn't stopping at a press statement. The Bar Association will now raise the problems with AIMA's management and "other competent entities" in an effort to secure improvements.
GrowIN's Read: The Cost of a Broken Portal
This isn't AIMA's first collision with the legal profession, and it comes against a backdrop of genuine — if incomplete — progress. Since September 2024, the government managed to resolve most of the 900,000 cases that were pending at AIMA through a task force — the Estrutura de Missão, with 20 service points spread across the country. Yet the agency's inability to serve migrants promptly continues to generate court cases and hamper the functioning of the judiciary. That's the uncomfortable pattern here: headline backlog numbers can fall while the day-to-day service experience — the part that actually determines whether someone keeps legal status — stays broken.
Our own read of the OA's complaint is this: if lawyers are burning half a working day per client just to confirm a case status that a working portal could show instantly, that cost doesn't disappear — it gets passed on as higher fees, longer processing anxiety, and, in the worst cases, missed renewal windows for people who can least afford them. When lawyers can't get a straight answer from the agency, the client's due process rights become collateral damage — a line that sums up why this dispute matters well beyond Lisbon's legal community.
Why This Matters If You Have a Pending Case
For anyone with an application sitting inside AIMA's system — a D7 renewal, a Golden Visa file, a pending residence permit — this dispute is a signal to build in slack. Deadlines don't bend because a portal is unreliable, and AIMA's own Portal das Renovações is precisely the kind of digital channel the Bar Association says still fails to give lawyers and applicants dependable information. Anyone relying on legal representation should ask their lawyer directly about expected delays at the specific service point handling their file, since the OA's findings point to real disparities between offices, not a uniform national problem.
What to Watch Next
The Bar Association has signalled it will escalate this through direct meetings with AIMA leadership rather than let it fade as a one-off statement. Whether that produces a dedicated lawyers' channel, portal upgrades, or additional hires at understaffed offices like Anjos will be the real test — and it's worth tracking for anyone with a case currently moving through the system. For background on how residence permit renewals and AIMA processes are supposed to work, see our visas hub.
Foreigners with active AIMA cases should keep their own paper trail — emails, appointment confirmations, case reference numbers — since the agency's own records, according to the Bar Association, can't always be trusted to tell the same story twice.