Immigrants will be asked to leave voluntarily; if not, they will be deported
On May 1 immigrants waiting for papers in Portugal took part in two demonstrations, demanding to be given documents; to be allowed to stay in Portugal. Surprisingly, very little was publicised about their actions. Today, the reason has become clear: thousands waiting for papers will never get them. Instead, they will start receiving letters from AIMA (the agency for integration, migrations and asylum) informing them that their requests for residency do not satisfy the necessary requirements, and they must leave the country.
Immigrants will start receiving the first batch of notifications – giving them 20 days to quit national territory – on Monday.
If they do not comply, “they will be subject to an expulsion process”, say reports.
Jornal de Notícias broke the news this morning, but it has since been widely repeated by all national media – and ‘condemned’ by parties of the left running in the current election race as a tactic to lure voters from CHEGA – the party that has habitually railed against the way Portugal (until last year) had an open-door policy when it came to migrants from much poorer countries who came here, seeking a ‘better life’.
As Jornal de Noticias explains, the current AD government – vying to stay in power in the elections in two weeks’ time – closed the ‘open door to immigration’ on June 3 last year, and created a ‘mission structure’ at AIMA to “resolve the more than 400,000 cases pending regularisation”.
Some of these cases had already been waiting for two years: the applicants may well have been among the people demonstrating in Lisbon on May Day, carrying placards saying: “No one is illegal”, “Documents for everyone”, “I live here, I am staying, I am not leaving” – and some of them may well be among the first 4,574 who will be asked essentially to “self deport” in the next 20 days.
Taking questions from journalists today, minister for the presidency António Leitão Amaro stressed that 18,000 will not be the final figure when it comes to immigrants invited to leave under their own steam in 20 days. There are still 110,000 applications waiting to go through the ‘same process’ with the mission structure, and he admits, there could well be further cases that do not tick all the requisite boxes – meaning more immigrants will have to leave.
According to Leitão Amaro, the information coming through today “confirms that immigration policy in Portugal is now regulated immigration, that immigration rules are to be complied with and that failure to comply has consequences”.
He stressed that the notifications to leave the country are because people have come here “violating Portuguese and European rules (…) A state governed by the rule of law needs to draw the consequences of what the law says, and what the law says is to give notice to leave the country voluntarily, within a period of up to 20 days, after which the so-called coercive removal must take place.”
However, Leitão Amaro recognised that AIMA’s decisions “are difficult to enforce” – and went on to politically attack PS Socialists and CHEGA for rejecting measures proposed by the government to speed-up forced deportations.
“Since the demise of (borders agency) SEF, Portugal has had great difficulty in carrying out enforced removals. Last summer, the government proposed to parliament that two essential changes be made so that when removals of illegal immigrants were carried out, they would actually be enforced. Firstly, the PSP should be responsible and not AIMA, which doesn’t have the capacity to carry out these enforced removals. Secondly, that the process, the procedure, the rules, the deadlines and the appeal procedures were all speeded up. At the time, at the end of the year, parliament, by a vote – among several other parties – of the Socialist Party and Chega, decided to reject these two changes,” he recalled.
Obviously, today – the calendar date for the official start of the election campaign – means that the news is ‘coloured’: it does indeed give the impression of some form of electoral expediency.
Hundreds of people over social media have ventured that it is simply that: a vote catching ploy that can never be properly enforced. How will AIMA manage to track down undocumented migrants and ensure they are removed from the country, if they are determined not to be found? Nothing is clear.
As for AD’s left-wing adversaries: they have variously seized on today’s news to suggest the government is using immigrants as “scapegoats”, either to win votes from CHEGA, or to “hide poor financial results” (this referring to the fact that INE statistics institute has announced a 0.5% contraction of the economy in the first three months of the year).
Immigrant associations appear ‘indignant’, with little inclination to acquiesce: Solidariedade Imigrante, one of the largest groups supporting migrants, has posted today: “Expulsion is not the solution! There are solutions and the government has them! We will always fight! Strength friends! Resist forever!”
In a nutshell, today’s news has created a lot of noise, and a lot of headlines – but that doesn’t mean it will actually happen. ND
