Council trying to stop sale of residence certificates
Several immigrant support organizations have accused Arroios parish council (in Lisbon) of attacking the rights of foreigners living in the parish.
The Ombudsman’s Office has already received a complaint of discrimination, and the government is talking about ‘extrapolation of competences’.
Rules in the parish that has the highest concentration of nationalities in the country changed last month with regard to the issuing of local residence certificates.
The council now requires any foreigners requesting these certificates to already possess a valid residence permit that has run for at least 12 months.
By law, it is enough to have a ‘declaration’ by two parish residents that the person (requesting a certificate) is living in the parish. But this is a rule-change brought about by circumstances.
“In Arroios, beds are rented out instead of rooms or apartments”, explains SIC Notícias.
Immigrant support organisations are not prepared to see this as any kind of reason for changing the rules.
They dub the parish council’s stance “a flagrant attack on the rights of foreigners.
“It’s condemning immigrants to irregularity, to fraudulent schemes and it’s condemning them to all kinds of exploitation,” Mariana Carneiro, from SOS Racismo, tells SIC.
The certificate of residence is used for various purposes, for example, it is required to register at a health center or for a child to be registered at a school. It is also needed for people to be able to ‘change their residence’ at the tax office.
The Ombudsman’s Office has already received a complaint about this new rule from Bloco de Esquerda (the Left Bloc). The government has also reacted, accusing the PSD/ CDS-PP coalition parish of “going beyond what the law says”.
“It is up to local authorities, namely town councils, to monitor the number of people living in houses and the conditions in which they live, but they must not go beyond these powers, namely by demanding residence permits in order to obtain a residence certificate,” said the government.
Contacted by SIC, the parish council has refused to make any statements, but guarantees that it is complying with the law in order to stop what it calls “legalisation mafias” – people/ networks selling access to residence certificates, as SIC has reported in the past.
The situation of ‘overpopulation’ in some areas of the city by foreigners (many of them still without work) is causing increasing stress on local services, while Portugal has also been credited with being the “last open door into Europe”.ND
Source: SIC Notícias
