The leader of the PS admits that the party has made mistakes in recent years regarding immigration. Pedro Nuno Santos rejects a return to the regime of expression of interest, which ended by decision of the Government of Luís Montenegro.
The mechanism allowed foreigners entering the country with a tourist visa to proceed with a regularization process, provided they had 12 months of contributions to Social Security.
In an interview with the weekly newspaper Expresso , the Secretary General of the Socialist Party acknowledges that regulated immigration is necessary and that the previous model created pressure on public services.
Pedro Nuno Santos points out that it is immigrants who guarantee part of what is produced in Portugal, but believes that the country must be demanding in enforcing respect for society's values.
In this interview with Expresso , Pedro Nuno Santos also does not rule out a scenario of early elections in the country.
And he guarantees that the socialists will be prepared for this eventuality. Faced with this intention, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, prefers to wait and see.
On the subject, the opposition leader promised that the PS will present, by the end of this month, a proposal to end a “situation of no man’s land or a void in the law” after the expression of interest was eliminated, stressing that he did not intend to recover this instrument since it is necessary to “find escape valves that allow the regularization of immigrants who are working”.