The Minister of the Presidency, who oversees migration policy, promised that the plan includes stricter rules, a strategy to attract qualified professionals, and differentiated treatment for Portuguese speakers.

António Leitão Amaro has criticised the current law on foreigners, which allows the regularisation in Portugal of those arriving on a tourist visa, through expression of interest, and the lack of adequate reception infrastructure.

“The migration policy is one of the great failures of the previous Government” and “one of the heaviest legacies we have received”, he stated on Saturday, in an interview with Diário de Notícias and TSF, criticising the “wrong choices of laws and entry and regularization rules in Portugal, but also due to the collapse of institutions, a result of the choices and the process of extinguishing the SEF (Foreigners and Borders Service).

The SEF and the High Commission for Migrations (ACM) were abolished in October 2023, giving way to the newly created Agency for Integration, Migrations and Asylum (AIMA).

After a meeting with deputies, Leitão Amaro had already promised to review the institutional model for managing migration in Portugal.

"Portugal had an institution, the institution was eliminated, its human resources were distributed among several institutions", a decision criticized by several parties and organisations, the minister told journalists, promising that the new measures will include a "correction also in the institutional domain ", without committing to the maintenance of AIMA.

In 2023, Portugal processed close to 180,000 immigrant regularizations, but there are still 400,000 pending issues, "including expressions of interest for the first residence permit, requests for family reunification, visa applications, renewal of visas or residence permits, visa processes for CPLP [Community of Countries and Portuguese Official Language] citizens”.

Among these candidates, many have already left the national territory due to a lack of response from the State.

AIMA receives an average of five thousand cases per week and has a response capacity of less than half that number.