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Portugal’s immigration policy is on the ballot in elections on Sunday as the centre-right government pitches its “regulated and humane” approach as proof it can be tough on the issue without aping the far-right.
The governing coalition’s fortunes will depend in part on whether it can win back voters from the populist Chega party, which has surged by harnessing voters’ unease over a rise in immigration.
In an interview with the Financial Times, António Leitão Amaro, the Portuguese minister in charge of immigration, blamed the sharp increase on the “open doors” policy of previous Socialist governments, which he said allowed people into the country with scant checks.
But he rejected Chega’s policy prescriptions, describing them as “closed doors, send them all back”.
Amaro’s Democratic Alliance has risen in the polls in the past month and is set to emerge as the largest party in the parliamentary election. But it is forecast to fall short of a majority, meaning the best outcome for Prime Minister Luís Montenegro would be returning as the head of another fragile minority government.
The immigration debate in Portugal echoes that in other European political battlegrounds, where far-right parties are agitating for stricter controls and radical ideas such as mass deportations.
Billing his government’s policy as “firm”, Amaro last year tightened entry rules and took steps to reduce a backlog of residency applications while trying to foster greater integration via Portuguese language training.
“This is a non-Chega approach,” he said. “The model is regulate. Tighten up for sure. But still be humane.”
Chega has held steady in polls as the country’s third biggest political force, but in the final week of the race its brash leader André Ventura has twice been taken to hospital after collapsing during rallies due to oesophageal spasms.
Ventura has insisted that Montenegro’s government remains too soft on immigration, which the far-right leader has consistently linked to crime even though the data does not support his narrative.
“Just go anywhere in the country and you’ll see the real invasion that’s happening: no control, no rules, no support,” Ventura said. “And what does the government want to do? Make it easier.”
Ventura also continues to demonise Portugal’s small Roma community.
Montenegro, who has ruled out a governing pact with Chega, won the last election in March 2024. His government collapsed when he lost a confidence vote triggered by his alleged failure to divest a stake in a business he founded, sparking Portugal’s third election in less than four years. Montenegro has denied wrongdoing.
Portugal is home to 1.6mn foreign nationals who represent 15 per cent of the population, a sharp climb from just 4 per cent in 2017. Many of the newcomers are from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh — a shift from previous decades when new arrivals came mostly from Portuguese-speaking countries such as Brazil, Angola and Mozambique.
Amaro said the surge in arrivals from south Asia created a new set of linguistic, religious and cultural challenges.
“There was a huge increase, a change in the nature, and a total lack of preparation by the public services,” he said.
Amaro, who is the third most senior minister in the government with a broad portfolio, said the government expected to issue “return orders” asking about 40,000 people of multiple nationalities to leave the country. That accounted for nearly 10 per cent of the backlog of residency applications it inherited, he said.
Amaro said the government was “trying to prove that it is possible for a successful centre-right policy to transform some of the things that disturb people the most . . . without leaving the field open to the radicals of the extreme right”.
Lisbon has also struck a deal with business to speed up the granting of work visas in return for employers doing more to integrate staff into society. But Ventura said the deal “will bring us more mafias that will control this immigration”.
Marina Costa Lobo, director of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences, said the AD and Chega were vying for people who had abstained from previous elections as well as each other’s voters.
She noted that voluntary return orders for immigrants had been issued by previous governments and were less draconian than deportation, but said the AD had chosen to emphasise them to look tough.
“It’s about optics and it’s a dangerous path because it’s contributing to that agenda where immigrants are seen as problematic, which is the Chega agenda.”
Pedro Nuno Santos, leader of the Socialist party, the main opposition, has accused the government of having a “sectarian discourse” and “trying to use immigration as an electoral tool”.
Additional reporting by Sérgio Aníbal in Lisbon
