[Trending News] 'Hanging' immigrants with change of rules in Portugal. Restoration needs 40,000 workers, but cannot hire them

The end of the 'manifestation of interest', a regime that allowed foreign citizens to enter Portugal as tourists and establish residence with a proven work relationship, is leaving 'hanging' many immigrants who remain in the country, making them impossible to regularize their situation and get work, as well as being preventing companies from hiring them.

The warning is given by the Association of Hospitality, Restoration and Similar of Portugal (Ahresp), which has already expressed with the government “availability to help collaborate in a solution”, and noting that immigrants have been fundamental to the sector, which resent “Deficit workers and people available to work”.

“It is counterproductive for the national economy to have companies the need to hire, and available workers – and, for procedural reasons, it is not possible to regularly establish a work relationship,” he says to the Express Ana Jacinto, Secretary General of Ahresp.

The government ended on June 4, 2024 with the regime of the demonstration of interest, but “this diploma has not based, such as AHRESP warned from the beginning, the situation of many immigrants who, having a employment contract, but without submission of Manifestation of interest, they were confronted, literally overnight, with the impossibility of regularizing their situation, ”explains Ana Jacinto.

AHRESP's head also recalls that in October “a diploma was published that allowed immigrants who proven to show that, before June 3, they had made contributions to social security for 12 months, to continue to benefit from the manifestation mechanism of interest to regularize its permanence in the national territory ”.

“However, this change to the transient regime has resolved only part of the situations, as it leaves out many immigrants who, on June 3, 2024, did not have 12 months of contributions to social security,” the secretary details the secretary details -General of the Association.

At the moment, immigrants can only be established in Portugal with work visa or for work search, as well as the visa of the community of Portuguese-speaking countries (CPLP), which includes Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe and Timor-Leste.

Immigrants are already more than 30% of the workforce on the Horeca channel

AHRESP says it has been flooded with “calls and requests for clarification on the revocation of the manifestation of interest,” either on the side of companies of the sector interested in hiring personnel or on the side of the immigrants themselves.

In this field, AHRESP assumes to be in a privileged position, since it is the only sectoral association that integrates a local center to support immigrants integration (CLAIM), which is a kind of 'arranged' agency for integration migrations and asylum (AIMA)., and works by face -to -face or telephone contact.

“The goal is to support the integration of immigrants, and although we do not do legalization itself, we explain the steps that have to take,” says Ana Jacinto. “But since we have a lot of companies in the sector to need workers, we often do this match, and what the entrepreneurs ask the most is what kind of contract they can do to employ immigrants.”