Foreign students who fled here nearly four years ago from Ukraine are starting to receive stark notifications from AIMA, “threatening them with expulsion”.
The reason, explains SIC today, is that these students requested – and received – international protection when thousands fled to Portugal from Ukraine as the result of Russia’s full-scale invasion, but AIMA cannot find any paperwork to show they were living in Ukraine legally and/ or permanently at the time.
The students, many of them from Nigeria, are thus being asked to furnish AIMA with this proof, or leave the country.
It is just another ‘effect’ of the government’s tightening of immigration laws.
SIC’s report says that the students however are deeply upset: they have written to parliament to say that AIMA is making a mistake. The Nigerian students, for example, were studying medicine in Ukraine, and are now doing the same here in Portugal. If they were suddenly to lose their statute of international protection, they could lose ‘years of study’ that they have managed in the interim.
SIC’s story however stems from an article in Público, which gives more details. The students have banded together in a collective to fight this situation, and argue that far from simply being a mistake, AIMA’s stance is “juridically and morally indefensible”.
The students’ position is that ‘there has been no legal alteration changing the right to protection conceded in 2022, and at that time, all that was needed (for students to be taken into Portugal) was a temporary residency permit in Ukraine.
The students refer to the “SEF for Ukraine” portal – where this can still be seen – stressing that to cancel protection now, almost four years on, would be “unjust and inhumane”, as well as contrary to the humanitarian spirit demonstrated by Portugal at the start of the Russian invasion.
The roughly 40 students ‘at risk’ of being expelled by AIMA say they feel “defrauded and disillusioned”.
AIMA however has assured SIC that it has given all the students being notified time to gather the relevant information that would assure continuance of current international protection.
Source: SIC citing Público
