Increasing AIMA's daily production rate
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Portugal is set to establish ten new Local Migrant Integration Support Centers (CLAIM) in the second half of 2025, aiming to enhance the Agency for Integration, Migration, and Asylum’s (AIMA) capacity to handle daily consultations and facilitate the integration of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
According to Pedro Gaspar Portugal, president of the AIMA board, these centers will be equipped with technology for biometric data registration and document processing, improving efficiency and accessibility in handling migration-related requests. The significance of these centers lies in their role in facilitating migrant integration by offering services such as counselling and referrals.
The new CLAIM center in Fundão, the fifth in the country, represents a "qualitative leap" by expanding its scope with advanced technology to speed up processing and registration. Fundão, in the Castelo Branco district, already has a CLAIM space, which has recently undergone an upgrade.
The expansion of CLAIM centers is part of a broader strategy to address a substantial backlog of over 400,000 pending immigration applications in Portugal. The government is also launching task forces aimed at resolving immigration delays.
The mayor of Fundão, Paulo Fernandes, expressed the municipality's willingness to "go further in shared services" and applauded AIMA's "dissemination and greater reach." The mayor considers the response to migrants a national goal and one of the most important for the development of Fundão in the coming years.
AIMA's mission is to regularize documents and recover outstanding debts, but this is a transitional phase, and the work will involve strengthening public policies addressing the challenge and opportunity of the migrant population. The aim is to build a multicultural society that understands its own dynamics.
In summary, the CLAIM centers are crucial for increasing the daily processing and service capacity related to migration and asylum procedures, serving as local support hubs focused on integration, counselling, and referrals for migrants, utilising technology to speed up biometric registration and document processing, and supporting government efforts to manage and reduce immigration application backlogs in Portugal.
[1] AIMA Announces Plan for Ten New CLAIM Centers
[2] Fundão's New CLAIM Center Opens Doors
[3] Portugal Tackles Immigration Delays with Task Forces
[1] The news of AIMA planning to establish ten new CLAIM Centers in Portugal, leveraging data-and-cloud-computing technology for enhanced service delivery and integration of migrants, has been announced. [2] In a significant step forward, Fundão opens a new CLAIM center, equipping it with technology to speed up biometric registration and document processing as part of Portugal's broader strategy to tackle an immigration application backlog.
