"Immigration has doubled in the country since 2018" and this influx of foreigners "is mainly concentrated in Lisbon", admitted the Social Democrat councillor, highlighting that access to housing in the capital is made more difficult by the "greater pressure of transactions that take place", mainly by "foreigners with much greater economic power than those who are here".

"This is pushing families out of the market" and "we need to have strong housing policies to cope, whether in terms of rent support" or in the provision of municipal housing, a priority of the executive, which aims to put nine thousand homes on the market in the next decade, she stated.

Filipa Roseta was speaking during the second debate of the Municipal Assembly on the topic "Immigration in Lisbon: what future?".

Stating that "between 2022 and 2023, the immigrant population increased by 37%, which corresponds to 30% of the total resident population in the city", the mayor reaffirmed the desire to maintain the capital as a "global city, multicultural and diverse”.

“Anyone who says otherwise is destroying our DNA” and “being ignorant”, said Filipa Roseta, promising: “we will continue to be who we are, we will not be different”.

Funding

Regarding the funding for associations that support immigrants, Filipa Roseta highlighted the new long-term support policies, with terms of up to six years.

According to the councillor, from now on, these associations will have “predictable funding stability”, a solution that will help to fulfil the municipal strategy of “eradicating poverty, promoting quality education and having more sustainable territories and communities”.

In the municipal neighbourhoods, which have 66 thousand residents, only 3,700 are immigrants (most of them from Cape Verde), but there has been a strategy to reinforce support and the “community intervention project department has tripled the number of community actions and projects”, in line with the “policy of recognition of the cultural diversity of the neighbourhoods”.

António Vitorino, former director of the International Organization for Migration and current director of the National Council for Migration and Asylum, also participated in the Municipal Assembly. He argued that “the challenges of integration are micro, they affect the place of residence” and the teaching of the host language.

Recalling that the most recent data indicate 1.044 million immigrants in the world, António Vitorino said that Portugal is “in line with the rest of Europe, with 10 to 12%” of foreigners in the total population.

“Profitable”

However, he stressed that the migratory pressure is particularly sensitive in some places, such as Lisbon, and argued that “public resources and the efforts of the authorities must be sensitive to this different distribution of immigrants”.

“Immigrants came to work”, he said, highlighting that, for the country, and “from a mercantilist perspective”, foreigners “are a profitable business”, because they contribute five times more than they take from the welfare state and perform jobs that nationals do not want.

“If there are any Portuguese candidates here to pick red fruits in Odemira, sign up to the queue”, the former socialist minister joked, recalling that there are sectors, such as agriculture, construction or catering, in which foreigners represent more than a quarter of the workforce.

António Vitorino also considered that “many of the problems of stigmatization result from social inequalities in which immigrants are presented as problems” and these inequalities “generate feelings of anguish” and fear on the part of Portuguese citizens, who are “afraid of what they do not know”.

The fight against discrimination is “a cultural struggle, but it is also a struggle for the cohesion of Portuguese society”, he stated, admitting that there are “particularly sensitive areas” such as health or housing.