Immigration Paralimni: the Famagusta District Aliens and Immigration Unit

That name confuses people, and fairly. The office carries the district's name, Famagusta, but it works from Paralimni. Famagusta city has been occupied since 1974, so the Republic's district services operate from the free area. Hold onto that one, because I'll come back to it further down.

The second fact matters more in practice. This is a police unit under the Aliens and Immigration Service, which has run as an independent service under the Chief of Police since 1997. It works under the Aliens and Immigration Law, Cap. 105, with Regulation 242/72. The Civil Registry and Migration Department, the body most people expect, has no public counter in this district. The government's appointment guidance is explicit: anyone living outside the Nicosia district contacts the police unit in their own district. If you're an EU citizen registering for a Yellow Slip, that registration also runs through this office.

You'll see this one office under four different names. Famagusta District Aliens and Immigration Unit is the formal one. DAIU is the abbreviation, FAMAGUSTA ARO is how it appears on the appointment sheet, and UNHCR's directory calls it the District Immigration Police Office. They're all one place.

The police publish a precise protocol with the mailbox, and following it exactly is what gets you a slot. Here's the procedure:

1. 1
   Email at least one month before expiry. Email famagustaetiseis@police.gov.cy at least one month before your current residence permit or entry visa expires. That deadline is the government's instruction, not my advice. It's also a published minimum rather than a target, so send the request the day that window opens.
2. 2
   Send one request per family. Not one per person. Separate emails for each family member are the booking mistake the sheet warns against most directly.
3. 3
   Write every personal detail in capital letters. The sheet says so explicitly.
4. 4
   Include all ten fields. Name and surname, date of birth, nationality, passport number, date of last arrival, Aliens Registration Number (ARC), expiry date of your residence permit, File Number (MP), how many people are applying, and a local telephone number.
5. 5
   Wait. The answer will be sent within five working days, and the sheet says there's no need to repeat the request. Don't resend.

No online portal is published today. What the government announced is that from 23 May 2023 an appointment could be arranged over the internet in addition to the call centre. Several guides still point at an older booking site, crmd.simplybook.pro, which is not the route the police publish now, but I've found no government page saying when, or whether, it was switched off, so treat any shut-off date you read for it as unconfirmed.

One honest caveat. The government commits to a five-working-day reply, and that's all I can verify. How quickly the mailbox picks up in practice, I can't tell you, so build the one-month margin in rather than testing it. And if your appointment is about a Yellow Slip application, help preparing the application exists on this site as a separate service.

Three rows in that table need a footnote:

• The appointment sheet lists 23 803288 as the unit's telephone centre, a number the branch directory doesn't carry. Try it if the four main lines don't answer.
• Google Maps and Waze both give the postcode as 5283. The police directory and UNHCR both say 5282, and 5282 is what belongs on a form.
• Google shows a 13:30 close, and widely-read guides print an 08:00 start. Gov.cy states 07:30 to 14:30 for every district police unit. That 08:00 figure belongs to a different office entirely, which the next section untangles.

UNHCR's directory independently repeats the same street address and the lead number, 23 803286. Two institutions publishing one record is as solid as this gets.

The Deryneia confusion is the one that costs people a morning. Several widely-cited guides give Eleftherias 83 in Deryneia as the immigration office, and so did Google's own AI answer on two of the three searches I checked. The government's open-data register shows that address is the Famagusta Citizens Service Centre, a Ministry of Finance service point with different hours and no permit counter. There's an honest reason the error survives. Until at least 2012 the immigration office genuinely shared that Deryneia building with the Citizens Service Centre. Then the immigration unit moved to Paralimni. The Centre didn't, and old directions never die.

A third building catches Greek-language searchers. Paralimni Police Station on Korai & Agiou Dimitriou handles ordinary policing, not residence permits, and its number, 23 803024, is not an immigration line. For the record, a detention facility is registered at that station; it has nothing to do with permit appointments. And one more correction while I'm at it: there's no district passport office in Paralimni. This unit doesn't issue passports at all.

In practice that means:

• Paralimni and Protaras
• Ayia Napa
• Deryneia
• Sotira and Frenaros
• Liopetri, Avgorou and Xylofagou
• Xylotymbou and Ormideia

A caveat on that list, because accuracy matters more than tidiness. The unit publishes no town-by-town catchment. I've drawn the list from the Cyprus Police's own station coverage pages for the Famagusta division, and those are policing boundaries. They're the best sourced answer available, not an official immigration catchment map.

One practical wrinkle: Ormideia and Xylotymbou fall inside the Famagusta police division while sitting closer to Larnaca on the map. If you live there, check which district your address is registered in before you commit to a drive in either direction.

The district unit takes in most residence applications. But eleven categories are examined only at the Migration Department's headquarters in Nicosia, regardless of where you live. The government lists them as:

1. Immigration Permits (Categories A to F)
2. Long-Term Resident Status
3. Educational Institutions entry permits
4. Research Centres entry permits
5. Foreign Interest Companies
6. EU Blue Card
7. Shipping Companies
8. Intra-Corporate Transfers
9. Digital Nomad Visa
10. Start-up Visa
11. Visitor, Programme Attendance

The same page carries a warning worth quoting: applications outside those categories will not be accepted at headquarters and will be referred back to the district unit. So the routing works in both directions. Don't drive to Nicosia for a renewal the Paralimni unit handles, and don't email Paralimni about an EU Blue Card it can't examine.

Then the constraint almost nobody publishes. For anything in those eleven categories, a Famagusta-district resident is served at headquarters only through a duly authorised representative whose professional office is located in Nicosia. That's the government's rule as written, and I'm quoting it rather than interpreting it. Whether you need representation at all depends on your category, so read the rule against your own case before hiring anyone.

The last mechanic explains everything above. For non-EU applicants, the unit registers applications and transmits the file to the competent departments of the Ministry of the Interior.

Paralimni builds the file. Nicosia decides it.

That's why the counter can't tell you the outcome on the spot, and why the status check further down is a national service rather than a local one. Questions for headquarters go to the Migration Department's contact points: switchboard 22308808, with correspondence addressed to the Director.

The Aliens and Immigration Service is the Republic's unit for exactly this work. The EU's own overview of Cyprus describes the same authorities, though it still names the former Ministry of Interior arrangement. Read that one for structure rather than for office names. Searches for a "north Cyprus immigration office" lead somewhere with no standing in Republic-of-Cyprus permit law, and I won't route anyone there.

Here's a genuine surprise for anyone who has queued in Nicosia: people rate this office well. Google reviewers score the Paralimni unit 4.1 out of 5 across 47 reviews as at 1 September 2026. The Larnaca unit scores 2.4 from 80 on the same day. I report the numbers as they stand. They're public ratings, not a service guarantee, so treat the score as a queue expectation rather than a promise.

Plan around the basics anyway. The counter works 07:30 to 14:30, weekdays only, and the Migration Department's guidance is to have your file number or ARC ready before any contact. Take with you:

• Your passport
• Your File Number (MP) or ARC
• The documents your permit type requires
• Proof of address
• A health insurance certificate, which non-EU applicants are commonly asked for

If you're unsure what a compliant policy looks like, DigiCare publishes a plain breakdown of the medical cover a permit application expects; DigiCare is the insurance company that owns this site. For what each permit route itself requires, start with a non-EU temporary residence permit rather than the counter queue.

Checking a pending application is a national service, not a local one. Text STATUS, a space, then your application number to 1199. The number sits on your Γ.Λ. 301B fee receipt, and the police page prices the message at about 3.4 cents. The Paralimni counter can't look further than that for you, because non-EU files are decided in Nicosia, not locally.

Every other district works the way Famagusta does: a police Aliens and Immigration Unit, weekday mornings, its own appointment mailbox. The full branch list covers them all, alongside the service's headquarters at 6 Agamemnonos in Egkomi. Nicosia is the exception, because residents there deal with the Migration Department itself at Archbishop Makarios III Avenue 90. I've covered how the Nicosia arrangement works separately, and the Larnaca unit works the same way as Paralimni. The Limassol unit in Zakaki has its own record too, and the Paphos unit on Eleftheriou Venizelou keeps its own record as well.

Airports are a different function. Passport control operates at Larnaca and Paphos airports only, and it has nothing to do with residence permits.

And if your real question is bigger than an office visit, the office isn't the answer. Try the permit routes in full, or the 90/180 question and the wider move, where the policy questions belong.