The focus is on the voluntary departure processes from Portugal, which, according to reports from the former Immigration and Borders Service (SEF) accessed by Lusa, resulted in over 30,000 notifications to foreign citizens between 2014 and 2023. In this period, the highest number of notifications was recorded in 2016, with 5,470 notifications, followed by a significant decrease in 2020 and 2021, attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Excluding the pandemic years, when there was a decrease because of extended stays, the numbers [announced by the Government on Saturday] align with those of other years,” stated Pedro Vaz. The PS deputy mentioned that the data over the last few years show approximately 28,000 notifications for voluntary departure from the country between 2016 and 2023.
“This isn’t new, and what the Government did was political theater using a normal administrative practice of the migration services, previously handled by SEF and now by AIMA,” the socialist parliamentarian remarked, suggesting that “the only thing left was for the prime minister to say they’d asked the drivers of the Government members to deliver the notifications themselves.”
Pedro Vaz believes that with Minister António Leitão Amaro’s announcement, the PSD-CDS coalition government intended to convey that it is “bringing immigration under control to appeal to Chega’s electorate.”
On Saturday, the Minister of Presidency announced that the Government had been informed this week by the Agency for Integration, Migrations, and Asylum (AIMA) that it is issuing 4,574 notifications for foreign citizens in illegal situations to leave the country. According to the official, this represents the first group of immigrants notified out of 18,000 rejections.
Leitão Amaro further indicated that this is “the first set of decisions” from AIMA and there are “another 110,000 applications,” clarifying that “the majority will be approved,” but there may also be “probably more rejections and more notifications to leave the national territory.”
The minister specified that a “large part” of the expulsion orders concerns individuals who were ordered to leave other European countries “and assumed Portugal was a place where they could stay, disregarding European rules because Portugal was not enforcing them.”
Portuguese authorities estimate that by 2024 there will be 1.6 million foreign residents in Portugal, according to the interim report on pending case recovery by AIMA, released in early April.
