“We cannot anticipate what the President of the Republic will do, and we certainly will not. From Livre’s point of view, there are more than sufficient reasons to send the bill to the Constitutional Court,” asserted Rui Tavares during statements to journalists after a meeting with the head of state at the Palácio de Belém.
According to the deputy, who was accompanied by a delegation that included the party’s spokesperson and parliamentary leader, Isabel Mendes Lopes, the issues at stake concern “inequality before the law,” between Portuguese citizens and immigrants, as well as among immigrants themselves.
“The Constitution grants rights only to Portuguese citizens, like the right to vote, but other rights in the Constitution apply to residents in the national territory, without exclusions. Worse still, it distinguishes between immigrants with or without money, and other distinctions that are clearly unconstitutional,” Tavares argued.
Rui Tavares also warned of the economic consequences of these measures, predicting that some sectors of the Portuguese economy “will be searching for workers who were already here.”
“The figures were inflated, the debate about immigrants was poisoned, and in a few years, we will be paying the economic cost, but even before paying that economic cost, we will be paying a social and political cost because the rhetoric has become much more hateful in our country,” he lamented.
Before Livre, the President of the Republic received the leader of Chega, who stated, “with 99.9% certainty,” that the head of state will send the bill to the Constitutional Court for preventive scrutiny.
The PCP will also be received by the head of state with the foreign law on the agenda, and the newly elected leader of IL will present her respects following her election last weekend.
The BE, which was the first party to request a meeting with the head of state on this subject, will be received on Thursday.
BE, Livre, and PCP oppose the amendments approved in plenary last Wednesday, while Chega wants the President of the Republic to urgently promulgate the parliamentary decree.
The new regime limits work-seekers’ visas to “qualified work”—for people with “specialized technical skills,” to be defined later by ordinance—and restricts family reunification for immigrants, granting more rights in this matter to those with certain types of residence permits, such as the so-called “gold visas.”
Under the Constitution, the President of the Republic has twenty days to promulgate or veto any decree from the Assembly of the Republic and may request the Constitutional Court to conduct a preventive review of constitutionality within eight days from the date of receipt of the bill.
According to the Assembly of the Republic’s portal, the decree was sent to the Palácio de Belém last Thursday.
