With Marcelo’s power of veto now exhausted, and the reality that a number of Constitutional Court judges saw nothing wrong with the government’s diploma, it now looks highly likely that the Foreigners Law will be tweaked, and sent back to Belém for approval very quickly.
As Mariana Leitão stressed, talking to journalists over the weekend, the government tried ‘too hard’ to pass this law: it did not listen to words of warning, or indeed advice, and thus everything has become ‘snarled up’.
But with the executive insisting it will navigate the constitutional issues; with CHEGA fully behind it on the need to control immigration quickly, and now IL throwing in its support, there is no doubt that the law will be passed.
IL sent its message through to the government in the form of a letter to Carlos Abreu Amorim, minister of parliamentary affairs, in which it said the party is available “to negotiate an urgent, rigorous solution” to bypass “whatever impasse exists” in the Foreigners Law.
The central issue, Leitão said over the weekend, is to have a “balanced, proportional and fair law”.
“On the one hand, there’s the issue of procedural safeguards, the appeals process, which seems to me to have room for significant improvements in the government’s law”, and then there is the issue of deadlines
“It’s important to ensure this process concludes so that the law comes into effect as quickly as possible. It’s crucial to have a legal framework that regulates immigration issues. We’ve always maintained that immigration must be governed by rules, and it must also have a predictable framework so that those seeking to immigrate know exactly what they can expect, and it must also safeguard the humanitarian aspect,” said Leitão.
People arriving in Portugal also need to be prevented from being “left to their own devices, living in situations of utter inhumanity at the mercy of labour exploitation.
“We must have a legal framework that is proportionate and fair and that anticipates the various situations so that action can be taken – particularly when there are cases of illegal immigration (…) and ensure that, for example, the crime of human trafficking, which has increased exponentially in recent years, ceases to have the significant impact it has had and serves to eliminate networks that assist illegal immigration and everything else,” the IL leader concluded.
Source material: LUSA
