Brazilian pianist Lilian Kopke, in Portugal for 40 years and an employee of the Portuguese State, is no longer included in immigration data, despite renewing her permanent residence permit decades ago.
Lilian came to study piano in Portugal in 1987 and ended up as a pProfessor at the Artistic School of Music at the National Conservatorywhere he only has good memories, mainly of the students and teachers he spent time with and the artists he interacted with.
He arrived as a tourist, because he never got a student visa from the Consulate of Portugal in São Paulo, where he lived, and then he started from scratch, continuing to enter Portugal as a tourist and asking for a residence permit at the then SEF.
In addition to her passport, she presented a request for a residence permit, which was not enough, for example, to become legalized at the Caixa Geral de Aposentações, as she was a teacher at a public institution.
He managed to resolve the situation with the Brazilian Embassy in Portugal, which allowed him to obtain a residence permit.
“At that time, there were four or five Brazilians here and I went to meet the Brazilian ambassador, they managed to interfere and I got the visa” for a residence permit and, two years later, permanent residence.
This authorization is renewable every five years and that is what Lilian did, until January 2020. Her authorization expired on January 15 of this year, but despite efforts and appointments to renew the document, she has still not been able to do so.
Despite several attempts, AIMA responded to previous requests, which had accumulated in the meantime. When he found out that they were dealing with requests relating to authorizations that expired in 2025, he contacted the services and it was then that he knew that “there is no resident card with that number”.
“They say it doesn’t exist,” he said, indicating that he repeated the request three times, always getting the same answer. “My number doesn’t exist”, he said.
The insistence was such that he was no longer able to place orders using his email.
“Of [19]88 until 2020, every five years, I renewed, always. And despite that, now I can’t”, he lamented, adding that he calls the AIMA number, but no one answers, just as they don’t respond to the emails he sends.
The result is that whenever the authorization expires, you no longer have access, for example, to banking applications and are permanently alerted to the fact that you have invalid documentation.
“That implies everything. You know that for anything you are going to do, you have to give your identification document. If it has an expired date, they ask for the expiration date, the date is expired, invalid document. And it was like that, one after the other. First it was the Caixa Geral de Aposentações, then the lease contract, which also does not have a valid document, and is difficult to explain”these.
As the Government extended the deadline for residence permits, it remained in force until June 30th and then until October 15th. Currently, there is no way to see the renewed documents, since, for the immigration services (AIMA), their authorization does not exist.
He feels “hostage to AIMA” and is afraid to travel, because while in Portugal the delays of this organization are known, at other borders they don’t want to know.
Lilian has two children born in Portugal, with Portuguese nationalitybecause she requested it, and is too tired to insist on staying in Portugal, where the environment is increasingly hostile for immigrants.
He says he doesn’t feel very comfortable “in this anti-immigration environment”, because he is an immigrant, even though he has lived in Portugal for 40 years, a country where he worked for the State for 37 years.
“I am very grateful to Portugal, because I raised my children, educated them here” in a “very calm environment”, without the violence and crime of São Paulo.
“As long as there wasn’t a party here that institutionalized racism, which was Chega, things weren’t like thatm, because people could have this feeling, but they had no way of expressing themselves in such a violent way”, he said.
Lilian Kopke recalls that Brazil also had a Bolsonaro and that “it takes time for people to come to terms with reality”. But he assumes that his future involves returning to his country, carrying in his luggage the memory of the “wonderful students” he had, the singers with whom he worked.
“These are the things I’m going to take from here, it’s not what’s happening now. I made a lot of friends and I was very lucky to meet these people who, in a way, made me feel more included,” she said.