“The migratory change we have seen in Portugal and the very large increase in immigration in recent years is one of the biggest demographic changes the country has experienced since the last century”, said the minister, on the side lines of another debate in the conference series “Lisbon - A City for All”, this time on immigrants.

In 10 years, the number of foreigners has quadrupled in Portugal and has created “a challenge for decades. We will be discussing the consequences and how to deal with this demographic change for decades”, said the minister.

“People are aware today that, in Portugal, there was a period of wide-open doors, when many people entered and when the State and the community were not prepared to receive them adequately”, he highlighted.

“There was inhumanity in the treatment of those who arrived and there was a sense of unease among those who were here, Portuguese and foreigners”, recalled the minister, who a year ago presented the Action Plan for Migration, which included 41 measures for the sector, the main one being the end of expressions of interest, a legal resource that allowed regularisation in Portugal even without a work visa and which was used massively by many foreigners.

“There was a government that changed its policy, always with a moderate logic”, with “more regulation and more control, in which laws have consequences and in which integration is seen as a right of those who arrive, but also as a duty to integrate”, explained Leitão Amaro.

With this “path of moderation,” it will be possible to avoid “becoming yet another of those societies torn apart by hatred and resentment between those who are here and those who are coming, between the Portuguese and the foreigners.”

1 year

Today marks one year since the announcement of the Migration Action Plan, a document “for four years, which has an implementation level of about two-thirds.”

“I think a lot has been done, I think the country should be proud of what we have done collectively, but there is still much to do,” he said.

“We remain within the spectrum of humanist moderation,” unlike other countries where the “only response people had was a radical, dehumanizing response, based on false facts encouraged by extremist forces,” the minister stressed.

The country has an obligation to “present the country with responses that work and are not extremist,” avoiding the “acceleration of fears and resentments.”

“There is no happy society if people hate each other,” he added.