Thousands in Portugal protest against 'uncontrolled immigration'

Thousands of people in Portugal have protested against ‘uncontrolled immigration’ in a rally called by the far-right CHEGA party. 

The demonstrators marched through the capital Lisbon with the Portuguese national flag and carried banners bearing slogans like, ‘Expulsion of immigrants who commit crimes’.

“We emigrated legally. That’s how it should happen in a developed country,” said Cecilia Guimaraes, who arrived in Portugal from Canada. She complained of a feeling of insecurity she says could be linked to foreign arrivals.

CHEGA party leader André Ventura said those who wanted to come to Portugal to work and contribute were welcome.

“Immigration cannot only be seen from the point of view of social welfare, it has to be seen in a drama that was discussed on the streets yesterday, the housing drama,” he said, referring to mass protests across the country on Saturday against unaffordable housing which many blame on immigration.

“If we let 15% of foreigners enter Portugal, there won’t be enough houses for everyone and there’s no point in pretending that there are because there aren’t.”

Another lawmaker for CHEGA, Portugal’s third-largest political force, said Portugal and other European countries were unable to control entries, which created a “feeling of insecurity” because of unscreened arrivals.

Rui Afonso said that some European nations were ill-equipped to properly take in immigrants who were then sometimes “forced to live on the street and fall into crime”.

Tensions surfaced as the march approached working-class neighbourhoods with large immigrant populations.

Some protesters also engaged in a standoff with pro-immigration activists in favour of a Portugal open to foreigners.

Posters reading “No Portugal without immigrants” also covered walls and bus stops along the route of the march.

The number of foreigners living in Portugal jumped by more than 33% last year to more than one million, around one-tenth of the total population, according to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum.

The centre-right governing coalition toughened the country’s migration policy in June.

It scrapped a measure allowing immigrants to apply for regularisation if they could prove they had been working for at least one year even if they had entered the country illegally.