In Portugal, a new law came into force defining the conditions and procedures for entry, residence and deportation of foreign nationals. A new provision is the automatic right to a permanent residence visa for foreigners who come to Portugal to start a business.
People with money “will have an easy ride, but for the rest who haven’t, who come to Portugal looking for a better life, little or no progress has been made,” Jair Santos Pereira, a Brazilian who works in a Lisbon restaurant, told IPS News Agency.
Most of the traditional migrant communities belong to the latter group, migrants from Portugal’s former colonies in Africa as well as Brazil. (Picture: Cape Verdean artist Suzanna Lubrano performing in Lisbon’s Discoteca Luanda).
Portugal’s new legislation puts it closer to the paths followed for decades by countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, which have made the most of the energy of immigrants for the development of their societies.
Portugal today has a population of 10.2 million, of whom 420,000 are legal immigrants and another 150,000 are undocumented immigrants, according to estimates by non-governmental organisations.
With a work force of 5.8 million people, of whom 9.9 percent are foreigners, immigrants are an important factor in filling the coffers of a state which does not hesitate to levy contributions from the undocumented, although the authorities call them “illegal.”
Portugal’s 64,295 Brazilian legal residents are now the largest foreign community living in Portugal, outnumbering traditional immigrants from Portugal’s former colonies in Africa - Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tomé and Príncipe - and the more recent influx of Ukrainians, who began to arrive in this country early this decade.
However, Eduardo Tavares de Lima, president of the Casa do Brasil’s General Assembly, estimates that there are actually some 120,000 Brazilians living in Portugal.
The other 60,000 Brazilians “are either children or grandchildren of Brazilian immigrants who obtained Portuguese nationality, or undocumented immigrants,” Tavares de Lima told IPS.
Source: IPS News Agency