Key figures — as of 2026-09-16: ~8,000 of Portugal's ~39,000 registered TVDE drivers were locked out of ride-hailing apps after AIMA's paper "proof of approval" was rejected by Uber from 15 April 2026 — Bolt gave a 30-day grace window instead — while care-home operators nationwide report accelerating staff exits over the same permit limbo; AIMA still had an estimated 40,000–60,000 cases actively pending in early 2026 despite issuing 386,000 permits in 2025.
Ride-Hailing Apps Turn Their Own Drivers Away
The moment that crystallised the problem came on 15 April 2026, when Uber and Bolt were forced to decide, on their own, whether a piece of paper from AIMA counted as legal proof of residence. AIMA's digital "proof of approval" for drivers in the queue says, in its own text, that it does not replace a residence permit when the permit is legally required — Uber read that line and started blocking accounts on April 15, while Bolt gave drivers a 30-day grace period instead, starting the same day.
The scale is not trivial. About 8,000 drivers are caught in this gap, out of around 39,000 TVDE drivers in Portugal. For drivers whose income depends entirely on being logged into an app, a locked account is the same as a suspended job — with no severance, no notice period, and no clear date for when the case will move.
GrowIN Analysis: A Fifth of a Workforce, Frozen
That 8,000-out-of-39,000 figure works out to roughly 20.5% of Portugal's entire TVDE driver base sitting outside the platforms they were legally registered on — not because they broke any rule, but because AIMA's card production hasn't caught up with its own approval queue. This is GrowIN Portugal's own calculation from the reported figures, and it is the clearest single number showing how an administrative backlog converts directly into lost household income across an entire sector.
Care Homes Feel the Same Squeeze, More Quietly
Ride-hailing drivers make headlines because an app can block them instantly and visibly. Care-home staff disappear more slowly, but the underlying mechanism is identical. The União das Misericórdias Portuguesas has publicly acknowledged serious recruitment problems for its network of care homes and social support services, particularly in the Algarve region — a warning echoed by the hospitality sector's own trade body. This exodus, which began quietly through 2024 and 2025, intensified dramatically in 2026. The drain of human resources paints a worrying picture for the business and social fabric that depends on immigrant labour to meet demographic needs.
Care work doesn't require an app login to function day to day, so the collapse is invisible on any dashboard — until a shift goes unfilled and a home has to turn away a resident.
Why the Backlog Keeps Biting
None of this is happening in a vacuum. AIMA had a genuinely brutal starting point — in 2024 the agency had a backlog of over 400,000 applications, and it issued 386,000 residence permits in 2025, a 60% increase on 2024. Officials point to that volume as proof the system works, but the claim that around 93% of pending files have "cleared" is misleading — "resolved" includes archived and rejected cases, not only approved ones. Independent estimates suggest an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 cases remain actively pending as of early 2026, and workers with jobs tied to a physical card are the ones who feel every week of that delay.
The government's own fixes have been reactive rather than structural. On October 15, 2025, Portuguese authorities announced that expired residence permits would no longer be valid if the permit holder had not started the renewal process by the time of expiration, replacing blanket extensions with a narrower six-month grace window. When that window itself began running out for people whose cards expired before mid-2025, AIMA announced on April 2, 2026 that it was extending the validity of renewal certificates for a further 60 days for exactly the cohort now stuck between an expired card and an unreadable digital certificate.
"An approval letter from AIMA is not the same thing as a job, and for thousands of workers in Portugal this year, that distinction has cost them both," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.
Practical Implications and What to Watch Next
For anyone in this position — TVDE, care work, hospitality, or any role requiring a valid card — the practical advice hasn't changed even if the deadlines keep moving: renew as early as possible through the AIMA Portal das Renovações, keep every receipt and QR-coded document, and escalate through a lawyer if a case sits unresolved past the legal decision window. Employers, especially in care and platform work, should track expiry dates for their foreign staff directly rather than relying on the worker to flag a problem after the fact — by then, the shift or the ride has already been lost.
Watch for whether Uber softens its stance to match Bolt's grace-period approach, whether AIMA issues another extension before the current 60-day window lapses, and whether the promised 20-day Green Lane for shortage occupations — nursing among them — actually starts clearing care-sector applications faster than the general queue. For a full breakdown of renewal steps and deadlines, see our guide to visas.
Until AIMA's card-production pipeline matches its approval pipeline, the gap between "approved" and "employable" will keep quietly emptying Portugal's gig platforms and care homes, one expired card at a time.