Immigrants have scheduled a rally today at the headquarters of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), in Lisbon, to protest discrimination and the lack of responses from the structure.
The "demonstration of discontent" is the first of several planned against the Portuguese migration policy. Hundreds of migrants say they have "life stopped" by the "inoperability" of the state agency.
Immigrants, most of them of Asian origin, have scheduled for this Monday a concentration with the headquarters of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), in Lisbon, to contest the discrimination and lack of responses of the structure.
The initiative has the support of the largest association of immigrants in the country, Immigrant Solidarity, which has collected many complaints from immigrants from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India, those “which the Portuguese state does not want to accept”, the president of the association told Lusa.
“Nothing falls from the skies, nothing is given to us, if we do not fight for things to change,” he told Lusa Timothy Macedo, commenting on the concentration scheduled for 10:00.
The leader explained that a group of immigrants asked the association to carry out a “dissatisfied demonstration”, with the concentration on Monday being the first of several planned against the Portuguese migration policy.
“We recently met with representatives of the various communities that are being very persecuted, even by some far-right organizations in Portugal. We speak of the Asian communities and also of the Islamic communities,” said Timothy Macedo, denouncing the “increased isolating Islamophobia” in the country.
The leader accused AIMA of showing a “great inoperability”, which leaves the lives of thousands of immigrants suspended, and accused this state structure of “not responding and rejecting more than 50% of previous expressions of interest.”
In addition, immigrants identified as irregular in other European countries are placed on a “Nuchene area non-admission list” and, because of this, have no response from AIMA.
These people chose to come to Portugal to request expressions of interest and it would be up to AIMA to identify the cases and remove them from the list in question, if they comply with the legal requirements in Portugal.
But “AIMA is doing absolutely nothing, complains of not having human resources and says that he does not often have the skills to do this,” said Timóteo Macedo, who wants, with this concentration, “to raise civil society and the media to the situation of these thousands and thousands of people who have their lives suspended.”
“They’re working here, they’re paying their discounts, they’ve been to another country and they’ve done nothing wrong. But now they have their lives still,” he said, noting that there are only 800 such cases in Porto.
The opening of priority channels to citizens of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries contrary to other origins corresponds to a strategy of “divide to reign” immigrants and the associative movement.
Recently, the agreement between the state and employers for hiring in the countries of origin, called “Via Verde”, but Timóteo Macedo is very critical of the measure, because they transform “workers into contractors, enslaved and chained to bosses”.