“They are not enemies. Just because they have a different skin colour or because they come from another part of the world. They come to work like we did and in search of a better life,” she argued, during an initiative with immigrants and BE activists, in Beja.

Portugal's duty “is to create public services that allow everyone to live well and to guarantee, assume and recognise that immigrants today make a contribution that is equivalent to almost half a million pensions for our elderly people”.

“Almost half a million pensions, which are immigrants’ contributions to Social Security”, she highlighted, arguing that it is “this recognition” that Portugal owes to immigrants and “not the hate policies that later give rise to these riots and disagreements that we have seen at AIMA”.

Questioned by journalists, Mariana Mortágua was reacting to the peaceful protest of dozens of immigrants that took place at the facilities of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), in Porto, and the intervention of the police to remove a man who infiltrated the protest with anti-immigration words and clashed with demonstrators.

“It’s not good for anyone, because we want a country that welcomes everyone, that lives well and lives with dignity. Portugal needs immigrants. It has had a development model, for better or worse, that needs this immigrant workforce,” she argued.

And in a district like Beja, focused on the agricultural sector, Mariana Mortágua recalled that, “if it weren’t for immigrants, there wouldn’t be people to work in agriculture”.

“There are many places where it is thanks to immigrants that schools are now having children again. And Alentejo is also proof of this. So let’s look at the positive side of this. We have people who want to make a life in Portugal, families who want to move to Portugal, who want to work in Portugal,” she stressed, arguing that AIMA “still has a lot to do.”