Portugal

Portugal was (one of) the first countries in the world to approve its National Plan to implement the Global Compact on Migration. The National Implementation Plan is structured around the following 5 fundamental axes: 

• Promotion of safe, orderly and regular migration; 

• Improvement of migration flow organization and integrated border management processes; 

• Promotion and qualification of immigrant reception and integration mechanisms;

• Supporting the connection of migrants to their country of origin and their return projects; 

The City of Lisbon’s One Stop Shop that brings together under one roof and streamlines services to immigrants and ensures open access to everyone (regardless of status) has been an inspiration for other cities.

The project Nascer Cidadão (To be born a citizen) allows every new born to be automatically and immediately registered in the hospitals and public maternities. This prevents parents from being forced into bureaucracy and helps to detect  any kind of vulnerabilites and special needs of certain communities, parents and their children

In 2015 the Strategic Plan for Migration came into effect. This is to meet several new challenges at the demographic, economic and social level faced by Portugal.

The Strategic Plan focuses on 5 priority policy areas:

The platform aims to enable Syrian students to resume their university studies in Portugal under an emergency scholarship program.  

The Global Platform is an international endeavour to provide emergency scholarships to Syrian students and enable them to acquire professional qualifications. Furthermore, it also aims at forging collective political will and to mobilise concerted action aimed at promoting Higher Education in Emergencies at large and to place it high on the international agenda.

Confronted with the need to help refugees, a group of Portuguese institutions decided to establish a platform to support those who come to Portugal. The joint initiative provides a national framework for the coordination of action to address the arrival of refugees in the course of the next two years. The objective of this platform is to centralize the offers of host homes, municipalities, local authorities and enterprises willing to help by rendering available human and material resources like employment, guidance and information. 

Starting in 2010, this seminar series have attracted more than 300 participants around Portugal. The objectives of the program include promoting diversity on the media, improving the theme of immigration in research and media production and promoting the values of intercultural diversity and integration of migrant communities.

The EU Immigration Portal serves as a first point of entry to reliable, practical and up-to-date information on immigration issues. It provides useful basic information written in user-friendly language and gives rapid and direct access to relevant external websites for further information. In concrete terms, the portal helps potential migrants to:

- Better understand the EU admission rules and procedures;

- Identify job and study opportunities;

- Find information on the rights of non-EU citizens who are in the EU;

Special programs to recruit health professionals from abroad, have been created in Portugal, who sees them as “an important answer to overcome the lack of doctors and nurses,” and filling urgent needs in the health system. The supply of qualified doctors in some Latin America countries has led to bilateral and multilateral agreements between the Portuguese government, sending countries (including Uruguay, Cuba, Colombia and Costa Rica), and health institutions.

The project has as main goal to promote the creation of business ventures by immigrants through their training to acquire entrepreneurship skills.

Main activities:

• Creation and capacity building of a team of trainers and intercultural mediation for entrepreneurship;
• Mobilisation and strengthening of the partner institutions for the promotion of entrepreneurship;
• Training and building the capacity of the potential entrepreneurs;
• Coordination with institutional partners and engagement of other relevant actors.