What AIMA Reported, in Plain Numbers
AIMA has reported that complaints against it fell to roughly half their 2024 level, and it has presented this as evidence that its reorganisation is working. The specific figures behind the headline are that the agency recorded 35.8% fewer complaints than in the first half of 2025, and that its complaint rate — complaints measured as a share of total attendances — dropped from 6.9% to 2.7%. On their face these are substantial improvements, and they come alongside a genuinely large service volume: over the past year AIMA handled more than 600,000 appointments and issued over 500,000 residence cards.
It is fair to acknowledge what is real here. AIMA has hired significant additional staff through 2026, reorganised its front-line services, and increased the number of people it attends to, and a lower complaint rate against a bigger volume is not nothing. The 2024 and 2025 baseline was extraordinarily bad — AIMA was among the most-complained-about public entities in the country — so some genuine recovery from that low point is plausible. If you are an applicant, the encouraging direction of travel is worth knowing, because it affects how you read wait-time reports and how much benefit of the doubt the system currently deserves.
But a headline that a metric "halved" invites a specific question that the number alone cannot answer: halved relative to what, and does a falling complaint count actually mean the underlying service improved? That is precisely the question the union representing AIMA's own staff has raised, and it is not a cynical one. Understanding the gap between "fewer people complained" and "the service got better" is the difference between an applicant who relaxes on the strength of a headline and one who keeps watching the numbers that actually determine whether their case moves.
Why Its Own Union Is Not Convinced
The scepticism is not coming from AIMA's critics but from the union representing its migration technicians — the people processing the cases. Their position is that a lower complaint count does not, by itself, demonstrate better service, and that AIMA should publish the operational data that would actually prove it. According to the reporting, the union wants AIMA to disclose how many cases remain unresolved, average response times for different procedures, the number of appointments that fail to result in a completed process, errors on residence cards, and the actual capacity of individual offices. Those are outcome measures; a complaint tally is not.
The logic is straightforward once stated. A complaint is a voluntary act by a frustrated applicant, so the number of complaints depends on how many people choose to complain, through which channel, and whether they believe complaining will achieve anything. If applicants grow resigned, switch to going straight to court, or simply give up on AIMA's internal channel, the complaint count can fall even as the substantive experience stays the same or worsens. A fall in complaints is consistent with better service, but it is also consistent with complaint fatigue — and the raw number cannot distinguish between the two.
This is why the union's demand for outcome data matters to applicants rather than being an internal labour dispute. The metrics it wants published are exactly the ones that describe your lived experience of AIMA: how long you wait, whether your appointment actually finishes your process, and whether your card comes out correct. If AIMA's improvement is real, those numbers will show it; if the improvement is largely in a complaint tally, they will expose the gap. Until they are published, the honest position is that the service may be improving — but the halved-complaints figure is not sufficient proof on its own.
The Portal da Queixa Contradiction
There is a concrete reason not to take the internal figure at face value: an independent complaints channel points the opposite way. The Portal da Queixa, a consumer complaints platform outside AIMA's control, recorded 643 complaints against AIMA in the first four months of 2026 — about 8.43% higher than the same period in 2025 — and that figure had risen to 740 by 27 May. So while AIMA's internal count fell, an external channel measuring the same underlying frustration rose. Two channels, two opposite trends, over broadly the same period.
That divergence is the strongest single argument for caution. If service had genuinely improved across the board, you would expect complaint volumes to fall on independent platforms too, not just on the channel AIMA administers itself. The discrepancy suggests that at least part of AIMA's reported decline may reflect where and whether people complain rather than a uniform improvement in outcomes. It does not prove the service got worse — external platforms have their own quirks and user bases — but it does mean the internal figure cannot be read as the whole story.
For applicants, the takeaway is not to pick which number to believe but to recognise that aggregate complaint statistics — from any single channel — are a weak proxy for how your specific case will be handled. The internal figure and the Portal da Queixa figure are both real, and they disagree, which is itself the point: complaint counts are shaped by behaviour and channel as much as by service quality. This is the same lesson as our breakdown of the Q1 2026 satisfaction index, where the trend in one indicator did not settle the question of whether the system was actually working for the people inside it.
What a Complaint Count Cannot Measure
Even taken at its best, a complaint count is silent on the things applicants care about most. It does not tell you how long a residence permit renewal now takes from submission to card, how long AIMA takes to answer a message on its contact form, or what share of first appointments actually result in a completed, decided process rather than a request to come back with another document. A case can drag for a year without ever generating a formal complaint, and a smooth-sounding statistic can sit on top of a queue that is still not moving for most people in it.
The complaint count is also blind to the specific failure modes that generate the most anguish: a residence card printed with an error and sent back for reissue, an appointment that "completed" on paper but left the process unresolved, or a file stuck in silence past its legal deadline. Many applicants in those situations do not complain through AIMA's channel at all — they escalate to the courts, hire a lawyer, or wait in frustrated limbo. None of that shows up as a complaint, so none of it moves the very metric being celebrated. The absence of a complaint is not evidence of a satisfied applicant.
This is why we consistently advise judging AIMA on outcomes rather than on its own summary statistics. The genuinely reassuring signs — the added staff, the higher daily appointment capacity, the family reunification prioritisation — are operational changes with concrete effects, and they are covered in our analysis of the 2026 staff boost and what it means for your timeline. A halved complaint count, by contrast, is a summary that could mean better service or could mean quieter frustration, and only the outcome data can tell you which.
The Metrics That Would Actually Show Improvement
If you want to know whether AIMA is really improving, watch the measures the union asked for, because they are tied to outcomes rather than to how many people complained. The first is average processing and response time by procedure type — how long a renewal, a first-time permit, a family reunification, or a citizenship-adjacent step actually takes end to end. Falling response times across procedures would be strong evidence of genuine improvement, in a way a complaint tally never can be. The second is the count of cases still unresolved past their legal deadline, which measures the backlog directly rather than by proxy.
The third is the rate at which appointments fail to complete a process — the share of people who attend an appointment and still leave without a finished, decided case. A system that is truly working should convert appointments into completed processes at a high rate; if that conversion is poor, capacity headlines overstate real throughput. The fourth is the residence-card error and reissue rate, because a card printed wrong is a hidden delay that rarely surfaces as a formal complaint but can cost an applicant weeks or months. Together these four numbers describe the experience the complaint count only gestures at.
None of these figures is currently published in a form applicants can easily track, which is exactly the union's complaint. In their absence, the practical substitute is to measure AIMA on your own case: note how long each step takes, whether your appointment actually resolved anything, and whether your card arrived correct and on time. Your individual timeline is a more reliable guide to how the system is treating you than any national statistic — and it is also the record you will need if you decide the delay has become unlawful and you want to act on it.
What This Means for Your Own Case
The single most important thing to take from all of this is that you should judge your situation on your own facts, not on a national headline. A halved complaint count does not shorten your specific wait, guarantee your appointment will finish your process, or ensure your card prints correctly. If your renewal, permit, or family reunification is stalled, the encouraging trend is context — not a reason to keep waiting past the point where you have the right to act. Let the improvement narrative inform your patience, not override your deadlines.
Concretely, that means tracking the deadlines that give you legal leverage. AIMA is required to schedule appointments within 90 days, and decisions carry their own time limits; once those pass without action, you can compel AIMA through the administrative courts regardless of how the aggregate complaint numbers look. Keep a dated record of your submissions, appointments, portal receipts and correspondence, because that timeline is what turns "AIMA is slow" into an enforceable breach. If AIMA has gone silent on your file for months, our guide to what to do after six months with no response sets out the options.
So read the halved-complaints story for what it is: a real but partial signal, disputed by AIMA's own union and contradicted by an independent complaints channel, that the system may be recovering from a very bad baseline. It is a reason for cautious optimism about the direction of travel, not a reason to assume your particular case is now safe. The applicants who fare best treat AIMA's summary statistics as background and their own documented timeline as the thing that actually governs when to wait, when to nudge, and when to escalate.
Frequently Asked Questions
By how much did AIMA complaints fall in 2026?
AIMA reported complaints down to about half their 2024 level: 35.8% fewer than in the first half of 2025, with the complaint rate as a share of attendances falling from 6.9% to 2.7%. These are AIMA's internal figures, measured against an extremely high 2024–2025 baseline.
Why does AIMA's own union question the figures?
The union representing AIMA's migration technicians says a falling complaint count does not prove better service. It wants AIMA to publish unresolved-case counts, average response times per procedure, how many appointments fail to complete a process, residence-card error rates, and real office capacity — outcome measures a complaint tally cannot capture.
Does the independent Portal da Queixa agree?
No. The Portal da Queixa recorded 643 complaints against AIMA in the first four months of 2026, about 8.43% higher than the same period in 2025, rising to 740 by 27 May. That external increase contrasts with AIMA's internal decrease, which is why observers urge caution.
Does a lower complaint count mean my case will move faster?
Not necessarily. A complaint count measures how many people complained, not how fast cases are decided or whether appointments finish a process. Your timeline depends on your specific procedure, office, and whether your file is complete — so judge your case on its own facts and deadlines.
What should I watch instead of the complaint count?
Watch outcome metrics: average processing and response times for your procedure, the share of cases unresolved past the legal deadline, how many appointments end without a completed process, and card error rates. For your own case, track the 90-day scheduling deadline and any decision deadline, since those determine when you can compel action through the courts.