The articles written by the PÚBLICO Brasil team are written in the variant of the Portuguese language used in Brazil.
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The Bar Association opened a competition for lawyers and solicitors who want to prepare immigrant cases which are in the legalization process in Portugal. The documents are stuck at the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA). There are more than 400 thousand cases pending with requests for residence permits. Registration for the competition is open until the end of this month.
The expected remuneration is 7.50 euros (R$45) per process. The value, however, is not the end. “It is necessary to remember that lawyers deduct 25% tax”, says lawyer Célio Sauer.
With this discount, the net amount received becomes 5.25 euros (R$ 31.5) per case, whose analysis, in the assessment of lawyer Vanessa Bueno, lit takes at least an hour.
According to the statement from the Bar Association, whoever analyzes the cases will have to bear “all expenses for accommodation, food and travel of human resources, acquisition, transport, storage and maintenance of material resources, as well as any charges arising from the use of trademarks, patents or licenses”.
No interest
The documents will be analyzed by lawyers and solicitors who do not work with the legalization of immigrants. In the contract signed between AIMA and the Bar Association, it is stipulated that the hired professionals “are prevented from having any interests or connections with the processes being processed or with the respective applicants”, for ethical reasons.
Those chosen to participate in the legalization process must undergo training on how to carry out the work. The workload foresees a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 200 processes per month.
Vanessa Bueno describes the work that must be carried out in each process. “It will be necessary to analyze the residence application, give an opinion and prepare a proposal for an administrative decision, which can be positive or indicate the relevant acts that must be adopted”, she explains.
She highlights what these relevant acts would be: “Documents may be missing or a document may not be true. There may be a suspicion that the employment contract that was the basis for the Expression of Interest is not true or that this document was poorly drawn up”. In this case, the question is who will do the verification. “If it’s false, will they have to call the GNR (Republican National Guard) or the PSP (Public Security Police)?”, asks Sauer.
Doubts
According to lawyer Adriana Ayala, there are ways to check whether an employment contract is real. “Just get into the Social Security and Income Tax system,” she says. But she questions whether lawyers will have access to these systems or whether they will have to make a request to these institutions.
Having followed dozens of cases at the AIMA task force Service Center, Adriana indicates some of the problems that lawyers and solicitors will face.
“There are some very good employees at the Customer Service Center. Others who do it anyway. I had to draw the attention of an employee who did not include an immigrant’s user number. I’ve already had a case where they put a criminal record into the system without the most important part, the last page, which is where the apostille is,” she says.
