The Consulate General of Portugal in Macau is in talks with the authorities of the Chinese special administrative region due to recent restrictions on residence permits for the Portuguese, the consul general in the territory informed Lusa.
“There are a number of issues related to the issue that are being discussed with the authorities” of the territory, but the consul general of Portugal in Macau and Hong Kong, Alexandre Leitão, “does not consider it appropriate to delve further into the Statements”, can be read in a response from the diplomatic leader’s secretariat, when asked about the legislative changes and new internal guidelines in the Migration Services.
Macao does not accept new residence applications from Portuguese in the Immigration Services based on the “exercise of specialized technical functions”, according to documents to which Lusa had access, only admitting justifications of family grouping or previous connection to the territory, a situation that It is already affecting Portuguese entities in the territory at the contracting level, as is the case of IPOR – Instituto Português do Oriente.
The director told Lusa that IPOR had to request the issuance of blue cards when hiring the last two teachers, a precarious work visa that does not include the same benefits in terms of health or education, nor does it initiate a process that guarantees residency. permanent. as was the case until now.
Limitations that harm Portugal’s ability to hire teachers, but not only that, stated Patrícia Ribeiro: “if this situation continues” and there is no diplomatic solution, “there will come a time when we will no longer obtain quotas” for “Blue Card” “, as it is necessary to balance the possible number of non-resident employees with mandatory local hiring.
“And that is a problem, because we already made some local hires, but in the second tender we no longer found [candidatos] with the qualifications we wanted,” he explained.
On the other hand, the alternative presented by the Migration Services, the recent program for hiring qualified personnel, “does not adapt to many entities and to IPOR itself,” he added.
On September 1, Macau announced two programs to attract qualified professionals in high-tech areas, the first under a law that came into force on July 1, which seeks to attract everything from Nobel laureates to Olympic champions to the territory. – considered “high-quality qualified personnel” – to “highly qualified personnel and advanced level professionals.”
“This program will not suit many people, because it has requirements ranging from bonuses, a very high salary level and a minimum stay of seven years in Macau, which we cannot guarantee,” explained the IPOR director.
Lusa tried to contact the director of the Portuguese School of Macau, but he did not respond in time. The same happened with the Public Security Corps, in charge of receiving applications for residence permits through the Immigration Services.
The first sign that something had changed became visible in October 2022, when the newspaper Plataforma reported that delegates from Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe and East Timor in The Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries had lost their right to reside in the territory due to Law No. 16/2021, which precisely regulates stay and residence permits in the territory.
This happened despite the fact that the Macau Forum is supervised by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, delegates perform the functions of representatives of other countries and is described as a priority body for Beijing and Macau’s economic cooperation policy with speaking countries. Portuguese.
Source: TSF
