Portugal the country of choice for immigrants

By Daisy Sampson, in News · 04-10-2019 01:00:00 · 23 Comments

Changes made to immigration laws in the country have helped to make Portugal an attractive choice for immigrants.

The number of people choosing to live in Portugal continues to rise, with almost 83,000 new residence permits issued between January and 15 September.



The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI) reported that by mid-September 82,928 new residence permits had been issued, 23,861 of which for family reunification, in addition to 59,102 renewals of residence permits.



“These figures are much higher than those recorded in the same period last year: 42 percent more new residence permits (58,562 from January to September 2018), with an increase of 36 percent in family reunification (17,598 were granted in the same period last year) and 8 percent more renewals (54,530 in the same period last year),” reads the statement.



The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in its annual report on migration, published last week and cited in the statement, also said that “Portugal is the second country where immigration is fastest growing”.



According to the OECD report for 2017, Portugal received around 40,000 new long-term or permanent immigrants that year, 20.6 percent more than in 2016.



The report noted that Brazil, Italy and France were the top three nationalities of newcomers in 2017. Among the top 15 countries of origin, Brazil registered the strongest increase (4,500) and China the largest decrease (-200) in flows to Portugal compared to the previous year.







The changes made to Portuguese immigration law in 2017 came into effect in October 2018 and could account for the changes in immigration levels to Portugal. The amendments to the law transposed the EU directives on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for seasonal work, intra-company transfers, and for research, education, training, volunteering and au pair purposes.



The OECD report also highlights another important change to the immigration law concerning the regularisation process for undocumented migrants. This law sees that migrants in employment and who had made social security contributions for at least one year may apply to be regularised on humanitarian grounds even if they are unable to show proof of legal entry into the country, which was previously a requirement.



The implementation of these legal amendments has led to a simplified procedure for obtaining and renewing visas and residence permits, especially for highly-skilled migrants, entrepreneurs, researchers and international students.



Other schemes such as the Nationality Law in Portugal which has now been amended to broaden access to citizenship for children born in Portugal to non-Portuguese parents and to foreigners living in Portugal and the “Golden Visa” permit have also helped to encourage higher levels of immigration and residency in the country. Meanwhile Portugal is also working on attracting Portuguese emigrants home with a measure allowing emigrants who have lived abroad for at least three years and who return to Portugal between January 2019 and December 2020 to benefit from a 50 percent income tax cut until 2023.



MAI also stated that the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) has registered in recent weeks “a significant increase in appointment scheduling capacity, especially for the renewal of residence permits, family reunification and granting of residence permits” thanks to the opening of around 11,000 additional staff vacancies by the end of the year and more than 116,000 vacancies for the first quarter of 2020.



It also says that SEF has implemented, in recent weeks, a new more secure method of scheduling appointments - following complaints about appointments sold through online classified ad sites – and a public competition is under way to hire 116 technical assistants, specifically for public service.



The improvements at SEF have been created to reduce processing times.



OECD countries received about 5.3 million new permanent migrants in 2018, a 2 percent increase on 2017, according to preliminary data.

Since 2015, European OECD countries have collectively received more permanent migrants than the United States. However, the United States remains the largest single destination country for migrants, followed by Germany.