At the joint press conference, which was part of the first official visit of the President of Cabo Verde to Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he expected the decree of the Assembly of the Republic regarding the new law on foreigners to reach the Palace of Belém either on Friday or early next week.

"I will certainly promulgate it before the middle of August. It will be immediate promulgation. I have no doubt, there was no vote against it in parliament and had an overwhelming majority to vote in favour, it represents a national consensus," he pledged.

The Portuguese Parliament approved a week ago, on July 21, in a final overall vote, the new legal regime for foreigners in Portugal, with votes in favour from PS, PCP, BE and Livre, abstentions from PSD, IL and PAN, and the absence of Chega.

According to the President of the Republic, the diploma "will soon come into force and provides a new regime namely for work visas and for student visas", with two cases that "are chronically pointed out as more complicated for people's lives". Adding that "We are making an effort at the same time to make it more flexible and improve visa processing in bureaucratic terms," he said.

The aim, according to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, "is to quickly put in place the mechanism that was a joint idea of Cape Verde and Portugal" when the "brothers of the CPLP still had reservations”. "The sooner the better because it represents recognising past merit, what we owe to Cape Verdeans in Portugal and we are convinced that Cape Verde also owes this to the Portuguese in Cape Verde," he said.

The head of state said that "with this mini revolution" the aim is to "strengthen the spirit of the CPLP, but to take further what began to be done when conditions that were not as favourable as those that are now being created”.

"The concern is obvious: it is to take further what is a community - not just a community between heads of state, prime ministers, foreign ministers, governors, even local authorities and civil society institutions, - but a community built every day by the people and we know, from our long experience, that it makes no sense to dramatise the issue of migration because we practice it, in both directions, day after day, enriching our societies," he argued.