The President of the Republic said that one of Portugal’s most serious structural problems is its demography. “It’s dramatic”, said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa during the annual meeting of the Portuguese Diaspora Council, of which he is honorary president, and which took place this Thursday in Cascais. When giving a portrait of the history of that body sponsored by the Presidency of the Republic, the head of State recalled how much the world has changed in recent years and took the opportunity to talk about migration issues, a topic in which he chose Luxembourg as a model country.
Despite not being “just Portuguese”, the demographic winter is “a fundamental problem”, considered Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Regarding the loss of population outside the country, he said that “fortunately” there is already “a beginning of a reversal of the trend”, but it is a “very slight trend and is not compensating for population growth”. After saying that, with regard to emigration, “the diaspora must be at the top of the priorities” of the Portuguese, the President dedicated himself to the issue of immigration. “It is perhaps one of the last opportunities to do so”, and he recalled his vow that he will stop intervening publicly when he leaves the Belém Palace.
To talk about immigration, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa preferred to give an example of a country that “50 years ago opted for Portuguese immigration”, Luxembourg. “Society was still rural, Catholic, conservative and chose based on affinities. It was a gamble by the State”he stated, having also recalled that the then Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who would later become President of the European Commission, made investments in Portugal “in housing, in social institutions, in education”, with the objective of returning part of the migrant population of the Grand Duchy. The President points out as the only criticism of this country’s modeling in welcoming migrants the persistence of “the problem of the social elevator”.
When passing to Portugal, he said that the “turn of the cycle in the vision of migration” was accompanied by the extinction of the Foreigners and Borders Service, which, he regretted, was not properly replaced. All of this brought additional questions, “first for reasons of regularization” of immigrants, then for economic reality and, finally, for perception. “The perception of an uncontainable and uncontainable reality associated with mythical visions”, namely the arrival of Muslims. And, as it is necessary to have “an exact idea of the numbers”, Marcelo listed how many immigrants there are and where they come from. The conclusion of this “sensitive issue” is that in a universe of approximately 1.5 million people, Muslims are a minority originating from Guinea-Bissau (in part) and Bangladesh. And as around two thirds come from Portuguese-speaking countries, “there is a strengthening of ties” with these states.
Later, the Portuguese Diaspora Council, headed by António Calçada de Sá and President of the General Assembly by Durão Barroso, paid tribute to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.