Luís Montenegro, February 9: “We need to take risks, look around the world for communities that do that they can relate to us better, that they can better integrate into our culture, into our identity, and that they can enter the labor market through the labor market and also through training to enter the labor market later.”
Who better to deal with us? That they can better integrate into our culture?
The leadership of the PSD, approached by DN to explain what these statements mean, clarified that the meaning of the phrase – criticized by all left parties with parliamentary representation and also by IL – “means that Portugal must have its doors open to immigrants , but we will have to do it in an organized and intelligent way. Attract those who can most identify with us and our needs. Because they are the ones who can integrate better.”
Ie: “For immigration to be safe and sustainable, it must also adapt to the labor market. We are not very interested in welcoming immigrants as a bridge for them to go to Central Europe.”
The party, which classifies those on the left as “Completely and absurdly intellectually dishonest”, recalls that Luís Montenegro “has been talking about this since 2017 and in his speech at the 37th Congress, on February 17, 2018, five years ago, he already said this”. And one question remains: “Where were the left and your columnists on that moment?”
But what did Montenegro actually say at that congress? The “say this” of 2018 is different from the “say this” of 2023.
This was the sentence: “We must be an attractive country for immigrants. In Europe’s migratory flows, we cannot afford to export people and companies. We need to attract investment: capital or human capital […] Portugal must be attractive to everyone these days, but we must be aware: we are good, but we are few”.
The PS, which believes that Montenegro, and also Carlos Moedas,repeat exactly what Ventura said about immigration policy”, he says it’s not easy, so “ignore the debate about possible PSD alliances [com o Chega] when the most eminent leaders say the same as André Ventura on their chosen theme”.
João Torres, deputy general secretary of the PS, states that “in both cases” [nas declarações de Moedas e Montenegro] there is “youa very erroneous view and even of deep contempt, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago in a founding party of our democratic regime”.
But it’s not just the PS that thinks this way. André Coelho Lima, former vice president of the PSD, believes that Montenegro’s and Moedas’ reservations regarding the reception of immigrants reveal a “lack of worldview” and are “not very intelligent”.
“I don’t subscribe – at all – to a utilitarian view of immigration. I don’t see myself in the arrogance of integration, especially for those who have had to be welcomed for decades (and I didn’t ask if there was such a need in the host countries). They reveal a lack of worldview, they are also not very intelligent It is our companies, our social security and our birth rate that say thathe says.
The IL parliamentary leader also contradicts Montenegro’s “version” by saying that “it is the people who should look for Portugal and not Portugal who should look for people purely in the logic of obtaining work”. Rodrigo Saraiva underlines the idea that “if we are a country with good public services and decent wages, of course we will be in demand” and warns that “when the subject is immigration, there are people who like immigrants and refugees, but on both, they always talk about who receives and not how to receive. And that’s what we should all focus on, on having the conditions in place to accommodate people who are looking for a better life.”
This is precisely the problem that Alma Rivera highlights when he considers that “the structural problem is the use of immigrants as cheap and disposable labour. This is encouraged on the one hand by labor laws and agency work and on the other hand facilitated by the lack of control by the ACT and the SEF (which could become worse with their extinction) and their lack of resources”.
“There is tremendous impunity for those who profit through the exploitation of others, such as in agriculture or mass distribution, which is why we must use thousands of immigrants.”Without working conditions, integration, habitability, in an absolutely liberalized real estate market, in combination with the lack of supervision, that contributes to undignified situations that have been known and allowed for years,” says the PCP deputy.
Teresa Mota, a co-spokesperson for Livre, for her part says that Montenegro’s statements “deserve a deep rejection from Livre, as they are based on questionable concepts and reveal a position close to xenophobia”.
Livre believes that Moedas and Montenegro’s words “make a blank slate of the fact that immigrants are people who usually leave their country unwillingly due to economic, social and even political conditions that prevent them from living a safe and dignified life”.
Inês Sousa Real, from PAN, who “does not see himself in a closed door policy”, says that “our migration policy must be humanitarian, and anything that implies the opposite is an unacceptable setback”.
Translated: “What the PSD seems to want to tell us is that few people are welcome in Portugal. On the one hand, for the leader of the PSD, only people who meet certain criteria, with certain classifications, with certain “talents” will be welcome. For the Mayor of Lisbon, only those whom we supposedly “need” and who already have a have an employment contract.”
Pedro Filipe Soares, leader of the BE, says that they are Coins and Montenegro sentences “illustrative of the gap between the PSD and the reality we are witnessing”and that of the party chairman in particular,”it seems more like an attempt to discuss future agreements on the right with an extreme right-wing party”.
“We are not facing an immigration crisis, we are facing a housing crisis”, adding “low wages” and an “economic model based on the maximum exploitation of this workforce”.
André Ventura speaks of an “approach” of Luís Montenegro, because “that the PSD leader says what Chega says in a different way and the president of Chega can only mean that there are no red lines”.
“He doesn’t want to meet me but he says what I say imagine he leaves after meeting me and says we have a very strong right wing government in Portugal for the next few years […] We are on the right track to form a government, I see my mistake from Dr Luís Montenegro, this PSD turnaroundhe considered.
Source: DN
