This information was announced today by Pedro Gaspar Portugal, president of the AIMA board of directors, on the sidelines of the inauguration of the new CLAIM in Fundão, the fifth in the country with the capacity to collect personal data and equipped with technology that allows for the registration of biometric data and the advancement of document processing.

“We estimate that in the second half of the year we will have around ten of these centres to boost capacity," Pedro Gaspar Portugal told the Lusa news agency.

There are approximately 170 CLAIM centres nationwide, focused on counselling and referrals, approximately 90 operating in partnership with local authorities.

"It is from these 90 that the ten new CLAIMs will be created," explained the head of AIMA.

Since 2006, Fundão, in the Castelo Branco district, has had a CLAIM space. Pedro Gaspar Portugal emphasized that it has now undergone an upgrade and made a "qualitative leap," expanding its scope of action.

"We are on the ground to provide responses. It will strengthen response capacity and bring in document-based processing of cases, naturally benefiting the migrant population in the area, but not exclusively, because it can be part of a national compensation network," Pedro Gaspar Portugal explained to Lusa.

According to the president of AIMA's board of directors, these new spaces, within the context of the Migration Action Plan, have the "advantage of allowing initial contact with migrants through document-based support, which then facilitates their integration process."

Pedro Gaspar Portugal emphasized that AIMA's mission is to regularize documents and recover outstanding debts, but added that this is a transitional phase and that the work will involve "strengthening public policies addressing the challenge and opportunity of this articulation of the migrant population versus the resident population," with a view to "building a multicultural society that understands its own dynamics."

Last year, AIMA had 220,000 appointments, and the director emphasized that 35,000 people did not show up.

The mayor of Fundão, Paulo Fernandes, expressed the municipality's willingness to "go further in shared services" and applauded AIMA's "dissemination and greater reach," in order to "be the best possible" and facilitate the "process of inclusion and integration."

The mayor said that Fundão has had for several years "an ecosystem responding to the challenges, opportunities, and problems" posed by migration and emphasized the importance of this population in countering the demographic problem and filling the labour shortage.

According to Paulo Fernandes, the response to migrants is "a national goal" and considered it "one of the most important for our development in the coming years."