AIMA's budget to rise from €97 million to €146 million in 2027; government says immigrants' fees will cover it all
The budget of AIMA, the agency that issues and renews residence permits, will rise by half in 2027, from €97 million to €146 million. The figures were presented to parliament's budget committee on 3 November by the minister for the presidency, António Leitão Amaro, and the secretary of state for immigration, Rui Armindo Freitas. More than €4 million will go on digital services, €4.2 million on in-person services at AIMA offices, and about €1.4 million on Portuguese courses, vocational training and training for the mediators who help immigrants.
According to Leitão Amaro, all of AIMA's spending, more than €100 million, will be covered not by taxes but by the fees immigrants pay for the right to live in Portugal: "immigration pays for immigration". Immigrants, the minister added, pay more than €2.5 billion in contributions into the Segurança Social system and receive less than a quarter of that sum back in benefits.
The national plan for the integration of immigrants, promised a year ago, will be approved by the government in November. It covers education, health, housing, access to services and documents, and also the recruitment of workers to meet the needs of the labour market. The plan will be funded from the same fees and from European Union migration funds; the minister did not say how much it will cost.
The government does not support Chega's proposal to withhold the child benefit abono de família from immigrants' children during their first three to five years in the country. Leitão Amaro pointed out that the single benefit, PSU, already requires a year of legal residence, as it did under the Socialists.
Rui Armindo Freitas added that in the first half of 2026 AIMA offices served 60% more people, complaints fell markedly, and more than 98% of the roughly one million backlogged cases have been resolved.
