Chega deputy Rui Paulo Sousa said on Wednesday that there is “no effective control” of immigrants, while the interior minister ensures that Portugal has “regulated and secure borders”.
“Right now, thousands of immigrants enter our country every month, lured by false promises of work and good living conditions without any form of effective control” and “many of them come from conflict zones” where they can be “victims or attackers”, said the deputy at the opening of the parliamentary debate on “immigration and security” requested by Chega.
Rui Paulo Sousa criticized the government’s decision to restructure the SEF (Foreigners and Borders Service) as it ended up “with the single security service whose main job was to control people at the borders”.
Chega’s deputy defended that “this policy of reception of immigrants and refugees makes no sense and needs to be changed urgently”arguing that it “totally failed”.
The vice president of the bank at Chega stated that the “the policy of open doors, the ‘everyone comes anyway’, without any criteria and control, unfortunately begins to bear fruit” and he cited as examples a fire in a building in Mouraria, in Lisbon, which killed two, the immigrant population living in Odemira “without the slightest security and hygiene” and the “act of terror committed last week by a refugee that led to the death of two women” at the Ismaili Center in Lisbon.
Also at the opening of the debate, the Interior Minister emphasized that Portugal is “a welcoming country, but with regulated and secure borders”.
“We are here today because someone wanted to make a connection between migration and security. That connection does not exist, it is based on false assumptions and promotes social alarm,” criticized José Luis Carneiro.
The minister indicated that “Portugal has granted international protection status to 3,645 citizens since 2015”, in addition to “59,078 beneficiaries of temporary protection status from Ukraine”.
“The lists of these citizens are viewed by the information and security services in national and international databases”such as the SEF Integrated Information System, the Interpol database or the Schengen Information System, he stressed.
José Luís Carneiro added that citizens who enjoy international protection under relocation or resettlement agreements are also subject to security checks by the Counter-Terrorism Coordination Unit.
“In Portugal, there is a new verification through consultation with national and international information systems. This happened with Abdul Bashir, the author of the crime on March 28. [ataque ao Centro Ismaili]. As the national director of the judicial police has stated, nothing has been investigated, nothing has been discovered that would warrant heightened security measures.said the interior minister.
José Luís Carneiro also advised Chega members to “read more Eça de Queirós and less Steve Bannon”, the former adviser to former US President Donald Trump who wrote the book “The rise of populism: Munk’s debates”.
“In doing so, you qualify the speech more and increase your humanism”he claimed.
Source: DN
