Portugal’s unicameral parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, has adopted new regulations on the admission of immigrants into the country. According to commentators, these rules are more restrictive than the previous legal framework.
The law was backed by center-right and conservative parties, including the ruling electoral bloc of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, the Democratic Alliance (AD), as well as Chega, the largest opposition party in parliament.
Under the new law, the state will collect and store immigrants’ biometric data and take measures to combat illegal immigration. Among these is the reduction of the minimum deadline for an illegal immigrant to leave Portugal from 20 to 10 days.
The new regulations also extend the waiting period for foreigners to apply for Portuguese citizenship from 5 to 10 years. For citizens of countries where Portuguese is an official language, this period has been extended from 5 to 7 years.
The law stipulates that a foreigner may lose Portuguese citizenship if convicted of a prison sentence equal to or exceeding 5 years.
In Portugal, a country of over 10 million inhabitants, nearly 2 million foreigners currently reside.