Miguel A. Lopes / Lusa
Presidency Minister António Leitão Amaro.
Presidential Minister António Leitão Amaro admitted that the number of immigrants in Portugal is far higher than that shown in the official data.
In an interview on Antena 1 program, this Wednesday, the Minister of the Presidency revealed that the Number of immigrants in Portugal will have a “very significant” high review.
“In the coming weeks there will be a revision of the numbers, the titles of residence requested and issued, very significant,” he said António Leitão Amaro.
For the ruler, updated data should “base a discussion on capacity and how public services are responding” as well as the economic response.
According to the agency report for integration, migrations and asylum (AIMA) released in September, the foreign population residing in Portugal increased by 33.6% in 2023, compared to 2022, totaling 1,044,606 citizens with residence permit.
However, Leitão Amaro implied that This number is much highernoting that the government already has preliminary information from the reviewed numbers, which will be known in the coming weeks.
“The country will know that the numbers we were working with until a few months ago widely outdated. We, when we entered the government, were already much more immigrants in Portugal, ”he said.
“There was a pile of 440 mil [processos] to treat and who will enter. And this are numbers [até] By the end of 2023. And until we close the demonstration of interest, there was also a very bulky entrance, ”he said.
Government pushes guilty to the PS
António Leitão Amaro pointed to a “great irresponsibility started from 2017 ″, with the António Costa Socialist Governmentalso accusing PS Secretary-General Pedro Nuno Santos to keep his party “in this irresponsibility” for eight months.
“Less than two weeks ago, it seems to have started shivering the way. The following week, it took another step, because after all the manifestation of interest lightAfter all it was no longer supposed to exist, ”said Leitão Amaro.
in a recent interview with Expresso, that it has not done well in recent years as to immigration.
The socialist leader stressed, in the same interview, that those looking for Portugal to live “have to realize that there is a sharing of a way of life, a culture that must be respected”, statements that several socialists demarcated.
In six years, more than doubled the number of legal foreigners in Portugal, from 480,300 in 2017 to over one million last year.
