The president was speaking at a meeting with the community on Tuesday night in the New Jersey town, which has the highest concentration of Portuguese in the US.


"I have a great, great pride in the Portuguese community of Newark and in the Portuguese community on the east coast ... as a Portuguese for everything that the Portuguese and their descendants have done in this great country, our friend, that is the United States of America," Cavaco Silva said.


In what was something of a farewell speech, just six months before his term as president is to end, Cavaco Silva highlighted the way that the Portuguese and their descendants in the US have earned respect over the years in fields form culture to science, education to politics.


Addressing several hundred members of the community, the president recalled that when he took office almost a decade ago he pledged when travelling abroad always to meet Portuguese living locally.


Tuesday night's gathering was one of the president's last engagements during a three-day visit to the US whose main purpose was his address to the seventieth General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. He is due to return to Portugal on Wednesday afternoon.