After receiving more than 29 million calls in just 12 hours, the SEF (Foreigners and Borders Service), the body responsible for immigration in Portugal, intends to reformulate its telephone answering service, today the only way to make appointments for various services in entity.
The almost 30 million calls, referring to the period between 8 am and 8 pm on October 17, reflect the chaos experienced in the management of the growing foreign community in the country. After months without opening new appointments, the SEF made more than 60,000 service spaces available in the last month, but the agency’s phone numbers did not support the demand and showed instability.
According to the entity, most of the calls were made from applications and services on the internet that perform automatic redial, causing system overload. “Because this is a new situation in terms of demand and corresponding pressure on the system, SEF is studying alternatives to implement a new solution soon, in a model of service in digital channels, with faster processing, to considerably reduce the current number of calls”, says the agency, in a note.
The idea, according to the SEF, is to increase the volume of contacts directed to automatic service channels and speed up the sorting and referral process for operators.
The announcement of the changes comes after a series of reports from lawyers and immigrants, who, despite having made thousands of calls to the immigration agency, were unable to be answered. Brazilian Jéssica Cavalcanti, for example, claims to have made more than 3,000 calls to the SEF with the help of an app.
Married to a Brazilian with Italian citizenship, she has the right to reside in Portugal, but needs the document issued by the SEF to remain in the country in good standing. “It’s humiliating. In the meantime, our lives are at a standstill. Without a residence permit, I can’t participate in selection processes.”
Like her, many foreigners who have the right to reside in the country due to family ties —spouses of EU citizens and children of newly regularized immigrants — end up in an irregular situation.
This week, the Portuguese press reported complaints about the sale of vacancies for service at the SEF. In a statement, the Portuguese body stated that, whenever it became aware of complaints about the scheduling system, it communicated the cases to the Public Ministry.
Despite the more than 50 in the country, the SEF has only 50 operators to receive calls. They answer an average of 3,000 calls a day. To unblock the system, the agency created in 2020 an automatic renewal system for foreigners who already have a residence permit in the country. After more than a year of operation, the service started to have continuous delays.
The situation is even more uncertain for 2023, when the Portuguese government intends to proceed with the extinction of the SEF, proposed two years ago. The body will be replaced by the Portuguese Agency for Migration and Asylum, but the changes still do not have a date to happen. Immigration services also have to deal with the queue of 200,000 foreigners with pending regularization processes at the SEF. These are people who have submitted the so-called “expression of interest” to legally remain in the country.
In most cases, they are immigrants who entered Portugal with tourist status and continued in the country working without permission — this is the main route of migration to the country, especially for Brazilians.
Portugal is one of the few countries in the European Union that allows regularization through work, but the process is bureaucratic and, given the current overload of migratory services, increasingly slow.
Although the risk of deportation is low and foreigners are able to work and have access to public education and health care, their irregular status leaves migrants in a situation of social and labor vulnerability.
To try to solve this problem, the socialist government of the prime minister, António Costa, created a visa aimed at those looking for work in the country. The permit creates a legal route for immigration to meet the demands of Portuguese companies, especially in the restaurant and services sector related to tourism.
The visa, which can be applied for by Brazilians since last Sunday (6), is valid for 120 days, renewable for another 60. Anyone who cannot find a job after this period is obliged to leave the country. Although it improves legal guarantees for foreigners and helps to relieve the regularization queue, the new permit will put even more pressure on residence permit services and telephone service.
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