In a move that seems difficult to comprehend (other than from a merely technical point of view) AIMA, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) has “informed the University of Coimbra that it has withdrawn temporary protection status from 37 foreign students who had been taken in after fleeing the war in Ukraine”.
Of the students enrolled for the current academic year, “37 have been informed that they will not retain their temporary protection status,” said a source from the University of Coimbra’s rector’s office in a written response to the Lusa news agency, without revealing the nationality of the students affected by AIMA’s decision.
On Sunday, the Público newspaper reported that the state intended to cancel the status of a group of displaced students, reporting the case of three students from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, originally from Nigeria, who were studying in Ukraine when war broke out in that Eastern European country.
According to the University of Coimbra (UC), since 2022/2023, that institution has welcomed 109 students of various nationalities under temporary protection status, 22 of whom are Ukrainian nationals.
The university confirmed that it had received from AIMA ‘the official list of third-country (non-Ukrainian) students enrolled and registered at this higher education institution who do not hold temporary protection certificates’, created in December 2022.
When asked by Lusa whether the university contested the list, the rector’s office stated that it “acts in full compliance with the legal and administrative framework determined by the Portuguese state”.
Despite this, it admitted that it has sought to “clarify the reasons behind the decision taken so that any action to be taken can be duly based on consistent facts and arguments”.
As to whether the students will have to stop attending their courses in the short term, the rector’s office clarified that this depends, “as in any other situation involving non-national students, on residence permits being granted by the competent authorities”.
In March 2022, the University of Coimbra offered its services to the Portuguese government to welcome refugee students fleeing the war in Ukraine – a number of whom were not Ukrainian nationals. At the time, the government was only too keen to take in refugees.
Source material: LUSA
