No papers yet? Your route in Portugal

This page used to hedge, because Portugal’s rules were moving and we would not print what we could not confirm. We can confirm it now, and the answer is hard: the route that most people are still being sold — the manifestação de interesse — was closed in June 2024. What follows is what is actually true today.

1. The manifestação de interesse is closed

For years Portugal had a route where someone already in the country could ask for a residence permit on the strength of a work contract and social-security contributions, without having obtained a visa first. In law those were Article 88.º(2) and Article 89.º(2) of the foreigners act.

AIMA — the state agency that decides these applications — states it on its own page in one line: revoked from 4 June 2024 by Decreto-Lei n.º 37-A/2024. The same decree does not apply to residence applications that had already been started on or before 3 June 2024, so those continue under the old rules.

Read that twice, because it is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Portugal right now:

• If you already had an application in before 4 June 2024, it is still alive. Chase it, do not restart it.
• If you did not, you cannot file one now. It does not matter how long you have been here, how many contributions you have paid, or what an agent tells you.

Anyone taking your money today to “submit your manifestação de interesse” is taking money for something that cannot be submitted.

2. What is still open — and the catch

AIMA still lists many work routes to a residence permit: employed work, self-employed work, teaching, highly qualified work, the Tech Visa, and a job-seeker visa (Article 88.º(7)) that lets someone come to look for work.

The catch runs through all of them: they are built around a visa obtained before you travel. That is precisely the step the manifestação de interesse used to let people skip. So for someone already in Portugal without papers, there is now no general route that turns time and work into status.

That is a bleak sentence and we are not going to soften it. Knowing it is worth more than hope, because it is what stops you paying three thousand euros for a door that is bricked up.

3. NIF and NISS

The NIF is your tax number and the NISS your social security number. Almost everything in Portugal runs through them — work, a bank account, a tenancy, and your own proof of what you have done.

What you can get, and on what documents, depends on your situation, and that is a question to ask at a CNAIM or a CLAIM rather than of an agent. One thing is certain either way: getting these numbers is free or close to it. Anyone charging you heavily for a NIF or a NISS is robbing you.

4. AIMA, and appointments

Immigration is handled by AIMA, which replaced the old SEF. Its contact centre is (+351) 217 115 000, Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm, and its site has sections in English as well as Portuguese.

Waits can be long, and that is exactly what the scam feeds on. An AIMA appointment — an agendamento — is not for sale. Anyone offering to sell you one is running the fraud that gets reported most in Portugal.

5. Ask in your own language, for free, today

You do not have to work any of this out in Portuguese, and you do not have to pay to ask. The state runs a Linha de Apoio a Migrantes: 808 257 257 from a landline, 218 106 191 from a mobile, Monday to Friday 9am to 7pm, with information in fourteen languages on top of a telephone translation service.

In person, the CNAIM bring several public services under one roof — including a free legal advice office — and there are more than 150 local CLAIM offices across the mainland and the islands.

6. If the work itself has become the abuse

Exploitation of labour is inside the crime of trafficking under Article 160 of the Portuguese Penal Code. The state says four things plainly about reporting it: anyone may report, it is free, it may be anonymous with no identity document, and you can report even if your papers are being withheld or you have none. In an emergency call 112.