Number of Angolan citizens has increased by more than 50% in the last 10 years. They went from more than 20,000 to more than 31,000 since 2012. More than half preferred Lisbon, followed by Setúbal and Porto.
The number of Angolan citizens residing in Portugal increased by more than 50% in the last 10 years, from 20,366 in 2012 to 31,435 in 2022, according to data from the Immigration and Borders Service (SEF) compiled by Lusa.
Angola was among the five most representative nationalities of Portugal on December 31, 2012, after Brazil, Ukraine, Cape Verde and Romania, with a total of 20,366 resident citizens.
Ten years later, another 11,069 Angolans chose Portugal to reside, totaling 31,435, of whom more than half preferred Lisbon (17,440), followed by setubal (5,821) and Port (2,285).
The cities of Braga (905), Santarém (893) and Coimbra, with 712 inhabitants, have less than a thousand Angolans living there. Madeira (40), Azores (41), Porto Alegre (57) and Guarda (59) are the towns with the lowest number of resident Angolans.
The data from the last year, made available to Lusa by the SEF, indicate that the majority of Angolans residing in Portugal are young people between the ages of 20 and 39, totaling 12,158 citizens.
Angolans between 40 and 64 years old (10,150 citizens) were the second largest age group residing in Portugal, in 2022. At least 7,071 Angolans up to 19 years of age resided in Portugal in the last year, also counting 308 Angolans aged 80 and over . further.
Also according to the SEF, 54 Angolans applied for international protection in 2022, but were not accepted by the Portuguese immigration authorities, for being “baseless“.
Angolan citizens, especially young people, grow up in Luanda to emigrate to Portugal, which they consider a “gateway to Europe”, in search of better living conditions, studies and employment, due to the “lack of hope” in the country African.
TO “lack of hopein Angola motivated a group of young people to create the so-called “Let’s Get Out of Angola Civic Movement”, focused on the exchange of information on emigration, with Canada, Turkey, Portugal and Brazil among the planned destinations.
The movement created a month ago by more than 20 young students and workers, who also want to emigrate, serves as a channel of information on internal and external procedures to emigrate, from passport processing to visas for the country of destination, as previously reported. to Lusa. .
Dozens of Angolans, mostly young, crowd in endless queues the facilities in the new visa center for Portugal, in Luanda, in search of information, passports and/or visa application for Portugal.
The Angolan sociologist Luzia Moniz considered, last week, that the “Exodus” of young “qualified” Angolans and their families to Portugal and other parts of Europe results from the current political and economic “misgovernance” of the country, fearing a “re-colonization” in Angola.
According to Luzia Moniz, the current emigration of young Angolans, with “failed hopes” for the 2022 general elections, is different from that registered in the second half of the 1980s, when these, the least qualified majority, emigrated to escape the alignment with the war.
That is why they were the least qualified and that is why almost all or most of them ended up doing jobs, such as public and private works, precisely because of their lack of qualification”, he told Lusa.
Today the phenomenon “is different, people are not fleeing from the possibility of going to the battlefield, but from the lack of social, economic and political conditions in the country,” he said.
Misgovernment, that wrong model that the country has adopted in political and economic terms, is what drives many young people to flee now,” stressed the journalist who also lives in Portugal.
Source: Observadora
