23,500 immigrants have had their residence permit application rejected, of which 4,500 have already been notified to voluntarily leave the country within 20 days

Europe Nepali Khabar, Lisbon.

123,000 residence permits have already been approved, representing 27.5% of the total of 446,921 pending expressions of interest, according to an official Government source who told Expresso, in a report less than a month before the end of the Mission Structure of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA).

With the initial cancellation of 171,000 applications due to a lack of payment, only 275,000 expressions of interest were processed and biometric data collected, and of these, 44.7% were given the green light to issue a residence card. This means that, at this moment, 117 thousand cases are pending, “all of which have already been processed and distributed to the instructors or instructed for a final decision”, says the same source.

On the other hand, 23,500 had their residence permit application rejected, and of these, 4,500 have already been notified to voluntarily leave the country within 20 days. Last week, the Minister of the Presidency announced that the number of applications rejected and the beginning of voluntary return in the final phase was 18,000, but by the end of the mission structure (3 June), the expectation is that this number will increase even further.