”After a rather intense flow, the numbers have stabilised,” he said. “We estimate at fewer than ten thousand the Portuguese citizens, Luso-Venezuelans or Venezuelan citizens with family connections to Portuguese or Luso-Venezuelans who have come to Portugal, either to Madeira or to the mainland in the last two years.”
The minister was speaking to journalists at the ministry in Lisbon in a break from an presentation of the programme of events to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 40th of Portugal’s accession to the European Convention of Human Rights.
Santos Silva added that there had been an increase in the number Venezuelan nations requesting residence permits in Portugal, and requests for Portuguese nationality on the part of the descendants of Portuguese.
“We have noticed this increase notably in the consulates of Caracas and Valencia, and so the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice have boosted their resources for these nationality procedures to be dealt with in the short term,” he said.
Santos Silva, said that he had no indication that Portuguese or Luso-Venezuelans were among those claiming refugee status in Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador in recent weeks.
However, he said that there were reports from Portugal’s consulates in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Panama and Brazil of an increase of the order of hundreds or a few thousand of Portuguese nationals once resident in Venezuela who were now in those countries.