José Pacheco Pereira analyzed the issue of immigration on Sunday night during the program ‘Princípio da Incerteza,’ where he was asked about his position on the new nationality law presented by the AD government.
The political commentator believes that nationality was not initially a priority for the government’s program but became one due to the “significant political victory of Chega in recent years.” Pacheco Pereira argues this situation has two sides.
On one side, he identifies a negative aspect, stating that “the AD government prioritized an issue without significant importance.” Conversely, he considers it a lesson for the Left.
“It dealt a wake-up call to the Socialist Party and the Left parties, who ignored for a long time an issue that was massive immigration, especially when it clashed not only with our urban landscape but also with the social differentiation that the Portuguese population struggles to accept,” the historian specified.
Regarding this last point, he asserted that the Left “is paying dearly” for two issues, namely immigration and security, a perspective that made Alexandra Leitão, also present on the CNN program panel, raise an eyebrow.
“The blindness to what is happening is essentially about living in a realm that is not genuinely ideological, because they have not had ideology for a long time, but more opportunity than ideology, and they turned a blind eye to problems affecting the poorest, those who have to live side by side with them,” he said.
The commentator admitted, “we are not a country that looks out for others, and we have unleashed demons,” thus suggesting that “Chega placed this issue in the wrong context, albeit with correct problems,” forcing the government to “upgrade” the topic.
Regarding the specific matters of the new Nationality Law, Pacheco Pereira expressed he doesn’t “find it scandalous to toughen the circumstances under which nationality is obtained, but is more sensitive to how they might be lost,”
“I agree with having conditions for access to citizenship,” he considered, yet showing opposition to the loss of “family grouping” and the “hypocrisy of Golden visas,” a measure suggesting that “those with money can buy nationality.”
It should be recalled that the Portuguese government announced last Monday new changes to the Nationality Law, including the creation of a Border Police and the requirement for proficiency in the Portuguese language. The changes aim to establish a ‘robust connection’ to the country while fulfilling the “commitment to humanism,” defended the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro.
