“I would like to announce that (...) we are going to ask the Government to block and suspend the family reunification that is thinking of happening in the coming months”, announced André Ventura.

The right to family reunification is established in Portuguese law for those who have obtained a valid residence permit in Portugal, and they can request the entry and stay in the country of family members.

When asked if he did not consider it a humanistic situation that anyone who enters Portugal legally and has a residence permit can bring their family, André Ventura responded that this issue “should have been raised before”.

“They should not have entered. And now they do, families come and, therefore, we can go from one and a half million to two million immigrants in a few months – just so people have this idea. This is unsustainable”, he argued.

Ventura argued that the suspension of family reunification “has nothing to do with humanism, with being acceptable or not”, nor is it intended to “penalize anyone”, but rather to ensure that Portugal does not become “a magnet for immigration”, accusing the executive of being ineffective in this matter.

When asked how long this suspension should be in force, Ventura responded: “Until we have resolved the situation”.

“We have hundreds of thousands of people whose immigration status has not yet been resolved, we have not even managed to expel those we had notified we were going to expel… I mean, are we going to let more people in?” he asked.

Asked whether the request for suspension is intended to cover those who entered Portugal under refugee status, such as refugees from Ukraine, André Ventura distinguished between those who come from “visible, notorious and understandable conflicts” and immigrants for other reasons.

“One thing is those who come from visible, notorious and understandable conflicts, as is the case with Ukraine (…) or women who came from Afghanistan. None of that happens to those who are here: these are not women from Afghanistan who are here [in Loures], around Arroios or in the center of Lisbon,” he said.

Ventura then argued that “for now, no one should access family reunification until the country has regularized half a million people.”

“That seems obvious to me. We haven’t regularized half a million and we’re going to let another half a million in?” he said.

Last week, the Integration, Migration and Asylum Agency (AIMA) warned that the number of foreigners will increase with requests for family reunification from those who have been regularized, and the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, promised moderation.

Of the 446,000 pending applications for expressions of interest that existed a year ago, around 170,000 were terminated due to a lack of response from applicants and 35 were rejected, but those who had their application approved have the right to request family reunification.

An official government source told Lusa that family reunification will be limited to the capacity of Portuguese society to integrate immigrants.