PM denies speeding up immigrant removal before elections

The PSD leader denied on Sunday that the process of notifying thousands of immigrants to leave Portugal in a few weeks has been accelerated due to the elections and criticised the opposition “for only focusing on bad-mouthing the government”.

Halfway through a visit to the Cantarinhas Fair in Bragança, on the first day of the official campaign, the AD delegation stopped for a coffee and Luís Montenegro was once again asked about the topic that marked the pre-campaign Saturday: the government’s announcement that the Agency for Migration Integration and Asylum (AIMA) will start notifying 4,574 foreign citizens next week to leave the country voluntarily within 20 days.

“Things aren’t happening because there are elections. Things are happening because the process started in June last year. It hasn’t been accelerated now. It hasn’t been accelerated at all,” he assured, saying that “the process has to run and it can’t stop” because of the snap elections on 18 May.

On this subject, Montenegro said that the government had started by creating a mission structure and service centres, and had multiplied AIMA’s service capacity “sevenfold”.

“We have more than 450 employees spread across the country, more than 500 lawyers involved in this operation. The operation we are currently carrying out is very, very significant. There are more than 400,000 cases that we are recovering and dealing with,” he emphasised.

When asked about the PS’s criticism that the AD campaign has been “Trumpised,” Montenegro said he didn’t want to comment on “what others say” but ended up replying.

“There’s a problem with the opposition in Portugal at the moment: they’re too focused on just bad-mouthing the government. I used to be in the opposition, I sometimes said good things about the government, and I also recognised what the government did well. And I think voters like that, they like someone who is in opposition and yet recognises that we need to work in the same direction,” he said.

Still on immigration, the caretaker government’s prime minister considered it possible to “strike a good balance between all those born and grow up and live in Portugal and those who come here to work”.

“At the moment, the government has information that around 18,000 of the cases that were pending do not fulfil the conditions to be approved and 4,500 of them have already been decided,” he said, saying that after the notifications, people can appeal or there may be cases in which the state can’t even contact them.

“This isn’t about coming and taking them by force and taking them out, it’s about notifying the person who can complain. If they can’t fulfil the requirements, they must leave,” he says.

When asked if AIMA will have the capacity for this whole operation, Montenegro reiterated that the agency has increased resources but recalled the government’s plan.

“Our project is for this specific competence to be in the PSP, with a new Foreigners and Borders Unit and the competence to conduct return processes. Unfortunately, as you know, parliament didn’t approve these two measures because the PS and Chega voted against them,” he said.

That’s why, he said, the PSD and CDS-PP will try again to pass these laws if they win the elections, hoping to have “sufficient support” in parliament.

“We don’t want to treat people badly. People don’t have the conditions, they don’t have the requirements to be here, they have to return to their countries of origin,” he said.