“This regulation does not seem to be the best one. It is a regulation, it will have some effect. I am against making decisions under stress, without information, and based on impressions and hatreds that are being generated in Portuguese society,” stated Gouveia e Melo during a visit to the West Sea company shipyards in Viana do Castelo, where today he is set to receive the support of socialist mayor Luís Nobre, as gathered from a source in the presidential candidacy.
Gouveia e Melo warned that “the economy does not change paradigms overnight,” therefore, if immigration for less qualified jobs is closed, the country will be left without “people to do these jobs.”
“Therefore, our economy will suffer. We have to be smart, we have to make this process gradual. In the future, this law will make complete sense. At present, there has to be a gradual process for the change we desire in the future, in five or six years.”
The candidate considers that the regulation of immigration “is always important because an unregulated system can bring future troubles,” but warns that without immigrants, the economy would become “unsustainable.”
“Without immigrants, in 15 years we have, for every active person, four active workers. If we continued like this, we would make our economy unsustainable,” he stressed.
Gouveia e Melo noted that Portuguese society is “aging” and “young people” are needed.
“We need to regulate and select the people who interest our economy so that these people come to contribute to our community. And it is not about creating hatreds. If there are people from other communities who bring extremisms, hatreds, or insecurity, decisions must be made based on data, not impressions. There are also some red lines that must be respected,” he said.
When asked about António Costa’s PS policy regarding immigration, the presidential candidate observed that, at the time, the economy very much needed unqualified workers.”
“In some way, we opened the doors in an uncontrolled manner, and now we are facing the problem of that opening,” he indicated.
For Gouveia e Melo, “there should have been greater control” and the Foreigners and Borders Service “should not have been dismantled, because it further weakened that control.”
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa promulgated on Thursday the Aliens Act, which changes the legal regime for the entry, stay, exit, and removal of foreigners from the national territory.
“If I were in Professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s place, I would have been elected five years ago. I am not in his place,” Gouveia e Melo responded when asked about what he would have done if he were the current President.
