A record 329,000 residency permits were granted in 2023
For the first time, Portugal’s resident foreign population has surpassed one million, having grown 33% between 2022 and 2023.
According to Jornal de Notícias, which cites data from Portugal’s new integration, migration and asylum agency (AIMA), a record of around 329,000 residency permits were attributed last year, a 130% increase compared to the year prior.
Only 38,000 of these permits (around 12% of the total) were attributed to citizens of other European Union countries, adds JN.
In the last five years alone, the number of foreigners living in Portugal has more than doubled, skyrocketing from around 480,000 at the end of 2018 to 1.4 million in 2023 – meaning they now account for almost 10% of the Portuguese population. Only 182,000 of these foreigners are from other EU countries, with 858,000 coming from countries outside of the EU. JN stresses that these numbers do not consider the approximately 50,000 Ukrainians who are benefitting from temporary asylum due to their country’s war with Russia.
There is still no updated data on nationalities, reports JN, but if the tendencies remain similar to 2022, Brazilians will remain the biggest foreign community in Portugal, having represented 31% of foreign residents in Portugal in 2022, followed by citizens from seven Portuguese-speaking countries – Cape Verde, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor – which together account for 58% of foreigners living in Portugal.
With the number of incoming foreigners soaring, Portugal’s recently created integration, migration and asylum agency (AIMA) has been unable to respond, prompting the government to say it will review the institutional model for the entry into this country of foreign immigrants.
Leitão Amaro, vice-president of PSD, has described the dissolution of SEF (Portugal’s previous foreigners and immigration agency) and the distribution of its workers among several institutions as a “blunder”, although he recognised that no political party simply wants to see SEF ‘reconstructed’ in its former guise.
