Requests for support for the voluntary return of immigrants to Portugal broke records in 2022, with 1,051 subscribers, the majority Brazilian, with 913 registrations, the head of mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said this Friday in Lisbon.
“The numbers give a record number of subscribers to the program [ÁRVoRE, de apoio ao retorno voluntário e reintegração de imigrantes no país de origem]. We had 1,051 subscribers in 2022, and of the total number of returnees we are talking about 394 people,” said Vasco Malta, in statements to Lusa.
“For Brazil, more specifically, there were 913 registrations, which is also a very significant record, and 350 returned to Brazil,” that same year, said the same person in charge.
For Vasco Malta, this could mean that Brazilians, who are the largest immigrant community in Portugal, become more aware of the program and use it more, but it could also mean, depending on what the IOM has learned and the information it compiled, that “there are indeed a series of factors”, namely unemployment, difficulties in accessing the labor market and housing and the regularization of the residence card, which will have contributed to this increase in the number of applications.
According to the official, not only did the number of requests increase, the cases of people in situations of extreme vulnerability, on the streets or victims of domestic violence also grew “surprisingly.”
“What I would also highlight in 2022 (…) is the number of vulnerable cases, that is, we are talking about a very significant number of people who reached us in 2022, on the last line, street situations, domestic violence, trafficking of human beings,” he said.
According to the official, in 2022 there is “an abnormal number of situations of extreme vulnerability, which have always occurred over the years, but never at such a high level.”
The IOM Tree program (Support for the return and reintegration of immigrants) is co-financed by the Portuguese Government, through the Border Foreigners Service and by the European Union Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.
In 2021, the program registered 288 subscribers, of which 219 were Brazilian immigrants, and a total of 113 people returned to their country of origin, of which 93 were Brazilian.
Source: TSF
