“If everything stays as it is with family reunification and so forth, one of these days the people who are part of that society will feel like foreigners in their own land,” he warned.
The former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho warned this Thursday, October 16, that, if everything remains as it is regarding immigration, Portuguese people will feel like foreigners “in their own land” and accused the Socialist Party (PS) of eight years of inaction on the matter.
During the presentation of the book "Introduction to Liberalism," by Miguel Morgado, in Lisbon, Passos Coelho addressed the data released this Thursday by AIMA, which indicates that the number of foreign citizens residing in Portugal quadrupled in seven years, with around 1.5 million registered at the end of 2024, to stress that "a huge number of people entered Portugal in a very short time."
"And, if everything stays as it is with family reunification and so forth, well, one of these days what happens in other societies will also happen here, where the people, the nationals, the people who are part of that society, feel like foreigners in their own land," he warned.
In a speech dedicated to the theme of liberalism, Passos Coelho stressed that, according to that political philosophy, "there should be no problem with people feeling like foreigners in their own land," ironically stating that they would be considered "cosmopolitan," which "would be great."
"The problem is that it is not great because people feel insecure, threatened, disoriented in a certain way, suspicious... All those very human characteristics which, under normal circumstances, are not worth much, in these environments, things can spiral out of control," he stated.
Passos Coelho considered that "the minimum common sense makes anyone understand this," before criticizing the PS governments led by António Costa, whom he accused of having an immigration policy based on the principle of "let them in, this is how it’s going to be and I don't ask anyone anything."
"This was what the previous Prime Minister [António Costa] told the senior staff of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) when they alerted him, 'Mr. Prime Minister, be careful because we are losing control of this situation. Look, a lot of people are coming in, we don't even know who they are. We don't even ask for criminal records,'" he said.
According to Passos Coelho, in response to these warnings he attributed to the SEF, António Costa replied as follows: "This is how it is, understand? Don't think it's an accident, it's meant to be this way, it is to put these people here, this is to proceed."
The former Prime Minister accused the PS governments of having "done this consciously," before suggesting a question to António Costa. "Has anyone asked the President of the European Council if he would not like to review that position, which brought so much radicalism to Portugal, so much insecurity and uncertainty in the way people debate in the public sphere," he inquired. Afterward, Passos Coelho recalled that, during the 2024 legislative election campaign, in a speech at a rally supporting Luís Montenegro in the Algarve, he had already warned about the "immigration problem."
"When I drew attention to these problems two years ago, my God, several media outlets said: 'this guy is mixing security and immigration in the same sentence. Populism, total irresponsibility, he doesn't even seem like he was Prime Minister, completely irresponsible.' I don't know what they will say now," he noted. In this speech, which lasted about 50 minutes, Passos Coelho also warned that "there is a radicalism everywhere that is taking over the public sphere" and considered that its growth "results from an absolutely irresponsible way in which many of the issues that concern and trouble people have not been addressed."
For the former Prime Minister, whenever "there are governments that behave with an excess of demagoguery, in a populist way, that want to please everyone and push forward everything that needs to be done," the problems "accumulate and people say 'what are these guys doing there?'"
"This level of distrust, discredit, and uncertainty that results from the practices of liberal institutions, for being occupied and performed with general irresponsibility, generates radicalism. And radicalism generates radicalism," he warned.
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