Indians become the second nationality
At the end of 2024, 1,543,697 foreign citizens were registered in Portugal. This is the final number given by the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum in the report released this Thursday, which thus "removes" the figure released in April of almost three thousand immigrants and misses the estimate of 1.6 million.
Indians are already the second most representative nationality among 1,543,697 foreign nationals who, on December 31 last year, were residing in Portugal. The Migration and Asylum report released Thursday by the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), helps characterize this contingent: 42% of immigrants are between 18 and 34 years old.
If we extend the age range, “the potentially active population represents 85.5% of the resident foreign nationals, with emphasis on the age group between 18 and 34 years of age – 640.914”, says the report, which was released on Thursday, almost a year late. This happens on the same day that the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, approved the Foreigners Law, which places new obstacles to the entry of foreigners into the national territory. On the other hand, young people up to 17 years of age represent 8.2% of the total, while the elderly aged 65 years or older are no more than 6.3%.
Without great surprises – the round number of 1.5 million had already been announced by the Government in April – Brazilians continue to emerge as the most representative foreign nationality. There were 484,596 from Brazil in the national territory at the end of last year, followed some distance by the 98,616 Indians and the 92,348 Angolans. Another curious fact, but also not much surprise: 71.3% of immigrants are concentrated only in four districts: Lisbon (606,179), Faro (167,321), Setúbal (168,941) and Porto (158,229).
The same report fixes the year 2023 as the one with the highest number of grants of residence permits: 328,978. It is a number far above the 218,332 securities awarded during the past year (a decrease of 34%), and far removed from the 61,413 securities conferred in 2017. But AIMA itself points out that 2023 was an atypical year "due to the automatic conversion of expressions of interest by CPLP residence permits", in a self-declaring process on a digital platform that dispensed with the collection of biometric data, as well as the verification of criminal record or employment contract.
Among the most relevant reasons for granting residence permits in 2024 are professional activity (63,527) and CPLP agreements (59.372). The family reunification, to which the current Government sought to put a brake, accounted for only 25,093 of these concessions, yet above the 17,504 visas granted to students.
Counter-ordinations increased 183%
In the sanctioning field, AIMA initiated 3470 infringement proceedings for immigrants, an increase of 183% compared to the previous year. More than half of these offences (1871) were due to the lack of declaration of entry, followed by illegal stay in national territory and, at a long distance, the transport of people with unauthorized entry into the country.
As for the forced returns, the number soared exponentially in the first half of this year in which 9268 migrants were forced to leave the country. The previous year, there had been only 446 orders for coercive exit from the national territory. The variation has an explanation that relates to the lengthy process of extinction of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) "and the transfer to the AIMA of the administrative competences of removal and return", which "generated significant difficulties in the establishment and implementation" of these return processes, argues the agency led by Pedro Portugal since mid-2024.