MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Portugal tells rejected immigrants to leave or face expulsion

Brazilians, Venezuelans, Colombians, and Argentines are among those reached by the measure

Portuguese authorities told approximately 34,000 immigrants, including 5,386 Brazilians, to leave the country voluntarily within 20 days after their residency applications were turned down by the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), which reported an 18.5% rejection rate from 184,000 applications.

Failure to comply may lead to forced expulsion by security forces. Brazilians are the second-largest affected group after Indians (13,466). Other Latin Americans affected by the measure were 236 Colombians, 234 Venezuelans, and 180 Argentines.

Bangladeshis (3,750), Nepalese (3,279), Pakistanis (3,005), Algerians (1,054), Moroccans (603), and 2,790 people of other nationalities accounted for the rest of the immigrants reached by Portugal's plan to address a backlog of residency applications, with more expulsions expected as pending cases are reviewed.

After being notified, these foreigners have 20 days to leave the country voluntarily or be coercively expelled by security forces.

“We had 18,000 rejections, now there are almost 34,000,” Council of Ministers Chairman António Leitão Amaro said during a press conference in Lisbon. He also pointed out that the increase in rejections resulted in speedier notifications, especially in the last weeks of May.

“This notification, in the Portuguese system, allows for voluntary abandonment and only leads to coercive abandonment after a new procedure,” the official further explained.

Some 184,000 residency applications were processed, of which around 150,000 were accepted.

Leitão Amaro also mentioned that some 2,000 voluntary departure notices were delivered daily. The entire notification process is monitored by security forces, who can be summoned to forcibly expel these people if they overstay the deadline.