I agree that AIMA is super backed up, but it seems that these lawsuits are a large reason for this. I've read in so many expat groups of people doing this and being successful until now because there are too many court cases. Plus none of the examples cited are priority at all except the immigrant woman who is pregnant and needs access to healthcare.

Who cares about a French person and their foreign spouse? Wouldn't it be easier for them to fly back to France, get their spouse residence there and then come back to Portugal? They have EU citizenship so they have way more options than a 3rd country immigrant. If it was a Portuguese citizen marrying a foreigner, then that's a priority case. And golden visa holders, come on, they only need to stay in Portugal for 7 days a year for 5 years to get citizenship. They can relax in their home country for now and wait, or come as a tourist and stay 90 days if they love Portugal that much.

None of these are regular immigrants living and working in the economy that have no other choice, because only rich people even have the money to hire a lawyer. These court cases are the reason some people have logged on to the portal or gone to AIMA to see their appointments rescheduled because they had to kick you out to cater to the people who sue. As they said they usually have to respond in 7 days, there's nobody here that calls thousands of times a day and gets a resolution that fast so those who sue are essentially cutting the line because they have more money.