This initiative has the support of the country's largest immigrant association, Solidariedade Imigrante, which listened to the complaints of immigrants from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India, those “whom the Portuguese State does not want to accept”, according to the organisation's president.

“Nothing falls from the sky, nothing is given to us if we don’t fight for things to change,” Timóteo Macedo told Lusa, commenting on the rally scheduled for April 7th at 10:00.

The leader explained that a group of immigrants asked the association to hold a “demonstration of discontent”, with Monday’s rally being the first of several against Portuguese migration policy that will take place.

“We recently met with representatives of various communities that are being severely persecuted, including by some far-right organisations in Portugal. We spoke about Asian communities and also Islamic communities,” said Timóteo Macedo, denouncing the “increase in Islamophobia” in the country.

The person in charge highlighted that the association receives immigrants from all over the world and has already reached 70,000 members, which he considered to be “something unprecedented in this country and in Europe” and shows people’s discontent with the legal changes in Portugal, which eliminated expressions of interest, a legal resource that allowed the legalisation of foreigners only with a tourist visa.

Timóteo Macedo criticised the Integration, Migration and Asylum Agency (AIMA) for showing “great ineffectiveness”, which leaves the lives of thousands of immigrants on hold, and accused this state structure of “not responding and rejecting more than 50% of previous expressions of interest”.

He also said that immigrants identified as irregular in other European countries are placed on a “Schengen area non-admission list” and, because of this, do not receive a response from AIMA.

These people chose to come to Portugal to request expressions of interest, and it would be up to AIMA to identify the cases and remove them from the list in question if they meet the legal requirements in Portugal.

But “AIMA is doing absolutely nothing, complaining about not having human resources and often saying it does not have the skills to do this”, accused Timóteo Macedo, who wants, with this concentration, “to alert civil society and the media to the situation of these thousands and thousands of people whose lives are on hold”.

“They are here working, they pay their taxes, they have been to another country and have done nothing wrong. But now their lives are at a standstill,” he said, highlighting that there are 800 cases of this type in Porto alone.

“Divide and conquer”

The opening of priority channels to citizens of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, unlike what happens with other origins, corresponds to a strategy of “divide and conquer” immigrants and the associative movement.

Recently, an agreement was signed between the state and employers for hiring in countries of origin, called “Via Verde”, but Timóteo Macedo is very critical of the measure because it transforms “workers into contractors, enslaved and chained to their bosses”.

“The bosses are not responsible for anything, because they take everything from salaries, health insurance, the costs of [Portuguese language] education or housing that they told the Government they were responsible for”, he accused, stressing that they are going to “put people in containers, tied to companies, without the right to an autonomous life”.