Since the beginning of this year around 1,000 Portuguese who had been living in Venezuela signed on at Madeira’s job centres.
Local authorities claim requests for help with social housing, medicine and food benefits have also grown noticeably, while expenditure on health services has risen by half a million euros in five months.
The emigrants are fleeing the economic, political and social instability currently gripping the South American country.
A series of meetings have been held behind closed doors by the regional authorities to discuss the situation prompted by the volatility in Venezuela affecting Portuguese emigrants and driving their return.
The authorities said it is difficult to state with any precision exactly how many Portuguese have returned to the island from Venezuela, but an average of around 180 former emigrants in that country have enrolled at job centres on the island each month since January.
Portugal’s SEF immigration and borders authority has also received around 200 requests from Venezuelan nationals for residency in Portugal.
According to the estimates from Portugal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, close to half a million Portuguese and Portuguese-descendants live in Venezuela. Of these, about 300,000 are from Madeira, a Portuguese region that has around 250,000 inhabitants.