“I would like to announce that (…) we will request the Government to block and suspend the family reunification anticipated to occur in the coming months,” stated André Ventura to journalists outside an evangelical church in Loures, where last week, the PSP discovered a warehouse used for the illegal housing of immigrants.
The right to family reunification is established in Portuguese legislation for those who have obtained a valid residence permit in Portugal, allowing them to request the entry and stay of family members in the country.
When asked if it would not seem humane for those who have legally entered Portugal and have a residence permit to bring their family, André Ventura replied that this matter “should have been addressed before.”
“They should not have entered. And now they enter, their families come, and, therefore, we could go — just so people have this notion — from one and a half million to two million immigrants in a matter of months. This is unsustainable,” he argued.
Ventura argued that the suspension of family reunification “has nothing to do with humanism, with being acceptable or not,” nor is it intended to “penalize anyone,” but rather to ensure that Portugal does not become “a magnet for immigration,” accusing the executive of being ineffective in this matter.
When asked how long this suspension should last, Ventura replied: “Until we have the situation resolved.”
“We have hundreds of thousands of people whose immigration situation has not yet been resolved, who we have not even managed to expel despite notifying them of expulsion… Are we going to let more people in?” he asked.
Questioned about whether the request for suspension intends to cover those who entered Portugal under refugee status, such as Ukrainian refugees, André Ventura distinguished between those coming from “visible, notorious and understandable conflicts” and immigrants for other reasons.
“One thing is those coming from visible, notorious, and understandable conflicts, such as Ukraine (…) or women coming from Afghanistan. None of this applies to those here: they are not women from Afghanistan who are here [in Loures], around Arroios, or in central Lisbon,” he said.
Ventura then argued that “for now, nobody should access family reunification while the country has not regularized half a million people.”
“This seems evident to me. We have not regularized half a million, and are we going to let in another half million?” he remarked.
Last week, the Agency for Integration, Migration, and Asylum (AIMA) warned that the number of foreigners would increase with the family reunification requests of those regularized, and the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, promised moderation.
Of the 446,000 pending expressions of interest processes existing a year ago, around 170,000 were dismissed for lack of response from applicants and 35 were refused, but those whose process was approved have the right to request family reunification.
An official government source told Lusa that family reunification would be limited to the Portuguese society’s capacity to integrate immigrants.
