Approximately 10,000 cards were returned by the Post Office after attempted delivery to immigrants.
Four branches of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) will be open on Saturdays this month to deliver residence permits returned by the Post Office. Immigrants with pending documents will be contacted by email .
The procedure already takes place daily, but the volume of cards to be delivered is high. There are approximately 10,000 documents. Therefore, offering appointments outside of regular business hours avoids disrupting already scheduled appointments .
The following stores will be operating for this service: António Augusto Aguiar in Lisbon, as well as the stores in Porto (Capitólio), Vila Real, and Braga . Deliveries will take place every Saturday this month. The exception is the Braga store, which will only offer this additional service on June 20th and 27th.
Most of these residency permits are from the mission structure: first residency permits, CPLP permits, and renewals. These documents were returned to AIMA by mail because they were not collected by the immigrants after notification .
To speed up deliveries without disrupting daily service, the solution found was to open on Saturdays. This had already happened last year with the Anjos unit in Lisbon. Now, the strategy was to make delivery points available in the main regions of the country. The newspaper also found that this initiative required organization from the agency's employees and investment in overtime to meet the demand .
AIMA advises people awaiting their cards to keep an eye on their email. At the same time, it emphasizes that the documents will only be delivered to those who receive the notification. The fee is 29 euros.