UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS IN PORTUGAL
For several decades Portugal was a typical country of emigration, but since about 15 years ago, it has also become a country of immigration. The Portuguese construction workers who seek work at construction sites throughout Europe are constantly being replaced by nationals from the former Portuguese colonies - political or economic refugees - who add to the ranks of undocumented aliens. In efforts to meet ever stricter immigration policy requirements of its EU and Schengen partners, Portugal has attempted to tackle illegal immigration through two successive operations of regularisation of undocumented aliens in 1993 and 1996, and is currently preparing a new immigration law.
Induced immigration
Portugal is particular in that it has remained a country of emigration, in spite of increasing immigration. Every year, some 30,000 Portuguese leave their country, mainly for France, Switzerland and Germany, and mostly on a temporary basis (73% temporary against 27 % permanent emigrants). In Germany, many Portuguese are working on the large construction sites in Berlin, begun in view of the ongoing move of the Federal Government from Bonn to the new capital. Often they are employed by Portuguese firms. At the same time, some 15,000 immigrant workers have been employed on the vast construction sites of the World Expo 98, the new bridge over the Tajo, and Lisbon's new underground system. Thus, the country is witnessing a phenomenon of immigration induced by the emigration of nationals.
This induced immigration is nothing new. Indeed, from 1969 to 1974, a considerable community of immigrant workers from Cape Verde, who were then moving within the "Portuguese area", had already settled in the Lisbon region. Induced immigration of cheap labour often was, and still is, illegal and has gradually entailed a "stock" of indocumentados (undocumented aliens lacking stay permits). Among them there are refugees who fled the post-colonial conflicts in Angola and Mozambique but whose asylum applications were turned down.
In 1992, according to the largest estimates, some 200,000 of Portugal's 11.5 million inhabitants were foreigners, half of them with no legal right to stay.
On 1 January 1993, the Schengen Implementing Convention entered into force in Portugal, making it necessary for the government to meet the "security" requirements of the partner states which feared that Portugal would function as a loophole for African migrants heading for the EU. Thus, Portugal had to adapt its foreigner law to Schengen standards. Yet, this could not be done without first tackling the problem of the indocumentados. This was the purpose of a first amnesty operation (October 1992 to March 1993) aimed at the regularisation of the situation of undocumented aliens. However, this goal was not achieved. 80,000 persons were potentially eligible for regularisation. According to the Government, some 40,000 applications were approved. However, according to the 1994 report of the Service of Aliens and Frontiers (SEF), only 16,091 applicants, that is less than half of the official number, were actually granted stay that year. The failure of the operation was due to insufficient information being given to the people concerned on the one hand and administrative obstruction on the other. Widespread corruption among officials, the requirement of certificates not mentioned in the law, the difficulty for applicants to provide the requested documents (namely certificates of employment), a large number of applications which were never dealt with... All this contributed to the poor result of the operation. There is reason to believe that this result was desired by the government. According to Albano Cordeiro, a Paris-based Portuguese researcher, the low rate of granted stay permits highlights "the contradictory motivations at the origin of this operation: on the one hand, to enable the government to announce that it has put an end to the use of 'undocumented' work force, and on the other hand, to allow a certain sector of small and medium enterprises to keep benefiting from it".
Second operation of regularisation
A second operation of regularisation was launched in 1996. A law of 24 May 1996 opened a 6 month period of so-called "exceptional regularisation". It provided for stay permits to be granted to indocumentados who had a professional activity (an affidavit to this effect from a Portuguese colleague sufficed), a basic notion of the Portuguese language, and housing. In addition to this, applicants had to prove that they had not been sentenced for penal offences. Furthermore, the law was applicable only to aliens who had entered Portugal before a certain date. For applicants from Portuguese-speaking countries (the former colonies) the deadline was 31 December 1995; the deadline for applicants from all other countries was 25 March 1995. Human rights and immigrant organisations strongly decried this preferential treatment of nationals from the former colonies as discriminatory and in breach of the Constitution, but an appeal of SOS-Racismo Portugal was dismissed by the Justice ombudsman.
It quickly turned out that many promises were not being kept. To begin with, the information campaign started very late and made use of inadequate means. For instance, information on the regularisation procedure was spread through a radio station which has few listeners among the immigrant population.
The necessary climate of confidence to make as many indocumentados as possible emerge from clandestinity never arose. The police repeatedly arrested "illegal migrants" in the reception centres where applicants were supposed to present their applications. In some reception centres, officials received the applicants in a very arrogant and authoritarian way, subjecting them to police-like interrogations and demanding the submission of documents not required by the regularisation law.
Obviously, this sort of official behaviour had a deterrent effect on potential applicants.
Finally, despite the promises made by the Service of Aliens and Frontiers, there were significant delays in the issuance of stay permits. At the same time, certain private and public employers refused to acknowledge the temporary permits issued under the regularisation law. Indeed, the law provides for eligible foreigners to be granted provisional permits valid for one year only. After three years, these temporary permits are to be replaced by a permanent residence permit, provided the person concerned has not committed any offence.
When the campaign ended in December 1996, more than 35,000 applications for regularisation had been filed by indocumentados, of which more than 31,000 were approved.
To sum up, while the second operation of regularisation clearly benefited a significant number of indocumentados, it is unlikely to solve the problem of undocumented migrants in Portugal. Many "irregular immigrants have not been included in the amnesty. Now, the question is what will happen to them.
The government’s answer is to set up aid programmes for "voluntary return", and, above all, to introduce new restrictive and Schengen-compatible legislation on entry, stay and removal of foreigners.
Compiled from: Plein Droit No 38/April 98, GISTI, Paris: articles by Albano Cordeiro, and José Falcao; "Sans-Papiers" au Portugal - La Régularisation 1996 des Indocumentados, paper by Albano Cordeiro, URMIS-CNRS, Paris, July 97.