The Government “does not admit” reestablishing the expressions of interest because “the expressions of interest were the path to indignity” and “they threw into indignity all those who arrived through illegal means.”
The Secretary of State for the Presidency, Rui Armindo Freitas, stated this Friday that the Government has no intention of backing down and authorizing the expressions of interest, demanded by immigrant associations since June, and that they are organizing a demonstration this Friday.
The expressions of interest were a legal remedy, which ended in June, that allowed a foreigner to regularize with 12 months of discounts, even if they had entered with a tourist visa.
The Government “does not admit” reestablishing this mechanism, because “the expression of interest was the path to indignity” and “it throws into indignity all those who arrived through illegal means,” said the government official this Friday, in an interview with Antenna 1. .
Later, according to the ruler, The immigrants who requested this resource “were often exploited and continued to be exploited even in the labor market because a fiction of regularization was created without any type of order or organization.”.
This mechanism contributed to the “brutal volume of pending issues that this country accumulates”, around 400 thousand, stated Rui Armindo Freitas, highlighting that, with the end of the expressions of interest, at the beginning of June, and what he classified as To effect call, there is an “80 percent reduction” in residency applications.
Previously, the services received five thousand regularization requests per week, explained Rui Armindo Freitas, reaffirming the executive’s will to privilege immigrants from the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) over others.
“There is a clear option of positive discrimination from the CPLP”, which is “a common space, with countries with which Portugal already has a mobility agreement”he explained.
In August, a mission structure to regularize pending processes and this service is “to serve 2,300 people per day today,” in 14 municipalities in the countrybut sent a review for later.
“When people go there they are not automatically regularized, it is the beginning of a process” which will depend on the final opinion of the services.
This Friday, a group of fifty immigrant associations met in front of the Assembly of the Republic to request the return of expressions of interest as a way to guarantee the regularization of foreigners.
The group of 57 associations criticizes the changes in the immigration law, promoted by the Government in June and which marked the end of that legal resource.
In statements to Lusa, the president of the Associação Solidariedade Imigrante considered that the association movement is motivated by a large demonstration of immigrants.
“We are mobilized for this demonstration,” called for “a day when it is not easy” to mobilize people, since it is a normal work day, Timóteo Macedo told Lusa.
The final objective of the collective of 50 associations that promote the demonstration is “the resume a process that permanently regularizes” people who work and contribute in Portugal, instead of “exceptional solutions for some”, as happened with athletes or other categories of immigrants.
Source: Observadora
