Thousands of protesters waving Portuguese flags and roaring the national anthem rallied in Lisbon on Sunday to express their anger at “illegal” and “uncontrolled” immigration.
The demonstrators marched behind banners demanding the “end of mass immigration” and the expulsion of immigrants guilty of crimes at the protest called by the far-right Chega party, the country’s third-largest political force.
Immigration is “very good” but “rules are needed,” said Cecilia Guimaraes, a 66-year-old teacher whose parents emigrated to Canada.
“We emigrated legally. That’s how it should happen in a developed country,” she told AFP, complaining of a rise in insecurity she fears is linked to foreign arrivals.
Chega lawmaker Rui Afonso said Portugal and other European countries were unable to control entries, which generated a “feeling of insecurity” because “we don’t know their past”.
Afonso added that European nations were ill-equipped to “decently” take in immigrants who were sometimes “forced to live on the street and fall into crime”.
Among the protesters was Chega leader Andre Ventura, whose party more than quadrupled its seats at this year’s election.
Tensions surfaced as the march approached working-class neighbourhoods with large immigrant populations. Some protesters engaged in a standoff with pro-immigration activists in favour of a Portugal open to foreigners.
Posters reading “No Portugal without immigrants” also covered walls and bus stops along the route of the march.
The number of foreigners living in Portugal jumped by 33.6 percent last year to reach more than one million, about one-tenth of the total population, according to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum.
The centre-right government toughened migration policy in June. It scrapped a measure allowing immigrants to apply for regularisation if they could prove they had been working for at least one year even if they had entered the country illegally.