There has been plenty of news and political issues about immigration. There have been thousands of temporary African workers in our farms, some living in poor conditions, but working to enable their families to get an own home and means to start their own business.
The same for Brazilians and Cape-verdians in construction and services, such as cleaning. Nowadays most of them come from Thailand and some from Nepal. Good for them and for us.
But, since former PM Costa classed India as a former colony, compared to Brazil, Cape-Verde and other Portuguese speaking countries, tens of thousands of Indians and Bangladeshis are coming, seeking a job and Portuguese documentation to stay here, or move to other EU-countries.
Most of them come with a letter from an entrepreneur in Portugal, telling they will work here, but they don´t. Most of them writing those letters are foreigners, have business in services as restaurants, hairdressers, MC-delivering, etc, and, although in practice with very little clients and invoicing, they have a list of 20-30 Asian employees. If the former SEF comes there to check, the owner says it is their day off or they are sick, they will come later. The owners can survive as they receive money from the gang which takes a lot of money from the Indians who wish to come.
It takes some two years for those immigrants to get the documents from the former SEF and within this time they don´t work more than very few hours a week, for almost no money. Some of them spend most of the day in shopping centres, where they try to steal some food, goods or money, in order to survive. Those who work don´t speak Portuguese, which makes most of our normal population angry.
This resulted in many votes to the right. Currently there is a lack of control where those immigrants work, live and how. Some of them get subsidies. There is plenty of work available in farms, but most of them don´t work there. As far I know, most of people in the EU want immigrants to work, not taking vacations and not getting taxes to pay them to spend the day in supermarkets or shoppings. Why is there no control? Why does it take two years to check them? Why are they allowed to come into Portugal without a controlled working contract, as is the case for the Thai's?
