Portugal’s caretaker government plans to expel some 18,000 foreigners living in the country without authorization, a minister said Saturday in the buildup to a national election.
Portugal has been caught up in the rising European tide of populism, with its far-right Chega party surging into third place in last year’s election.
Stupid populism by the out-going center-right government. Most of those are probably well integrated Brazilians working in the tourism sector, and thus this will cause major staffing issues in the upcoming summer season.
Or British expats who didn’t register. Details are needed.
Unfortunately Brazilians have a kind of automatic citizenship on arrival from an agreement between Portugal and Brazil. They just have to say they want to settle here and the government gives them their own ID card with an unlimited visa. So it’s very difficult for any of them to be illegal here. These 18.000 are mostly from the Indian subcontinent and north Africa.
Either you are grossly simplifying their extended visa process or you are utterly misinformed.
There is no “automatic citizenship” for Brazilians. The only path to citizenship in Portugal is by bloodline and even that has become harder to get: it used to be that grandchildren of Portuguese citizens could start the process to get citizenship directly, and some good ~15 years ago it changed that only the direct descendants can do it.
While it is true that Brazilians with Portuguese ancestry get some preferential treatment for immigration, it is far from what you describe. And I highly doubt those are people that crossed the border covertly, as the government wouldn’t know were they live then. It is far more likely that these are people that came legally to Portugal, have an official address and for some reason lost their visa status but were tolerated to stay. But it might indeed be retired post-brexit British people or some digital nomads.
Iirc Portugal is giving out a lot of temporary work visa to e.g. Nepalese fruit pickers who must then dutifully serve their masters picking raspberries for multiple years to get a chance at a citizenship. Those would seem to be the kind of people ejected first/most easily.