In all honesty, one of the major appeals of Portugal at the time of our GV application was its relative LACK of immigration, particularly from non-Western countries, maintaining something like a coherent national identity, high level of safety and a high-trust society.
Native Portuguese people may resent Golden Visa holders or Americans for pricing them out, and thatās fair, even if we are few in number, largely lawful, and culturally assimilated.
However, there is deep, unspoken resentment toward the mass influx of migrants that are visibly and rapidly transforming Lisbon, Porto, and beyond.
Social services slammed, neighborhoods destroyed, culture decaying, crime up and trust down. And for what? A fake GDP boost? A cheap labor pool? Culture, safety, and national identity are being sacrificed at the altar of cheap ideology and cheaper wages.
Moreover, a bunch of solo male migrants do not solve a demographics crisis, they exacerbate them. Mass migration does not solve an inequality crisis, it concentrates profits in the hands of greedy business owners refusing to pay natives what they deserve and exploiting workers in what even the demographic arsonists describe as effectively slave labor conditions. So compassionate and humane!
Thereās nothing progressive about dissolving a culture from the outside in while calling it compassion. Thatās not humanitarianism. Itās colonization sold as virtue, and the people paying the price are the ones who built something worth preserving in the first place.
āEveryone winsā from mass immigration - spoken like the kind of person who treats a nation like a spreadsheet and culture like a restaurant menu.
Bluntly, I did not move to Portugal to live in another flattened out globalized s***hole with āenrichedā cuisine. I moved to Portugal to live in Portugal.
More on topic, the observation that the less is solved immigration-wise, the more Chega benefits, is astute, and my hopes are on the resentment coming from both left and right failing to cohere on a general target, the realities of politics and posturing, will be what saves us, at least for now. Iām honestly skeptical Chega will actually āsolveā the immigration crisis themselves, as most right-wing populist parties in Europe have, despite their rhetoric, maintained mass immigration policies that benefit their wealthy elite donor class. Capitalism is pro-open borders, after all.
A sensible policy would close the open door that things like overstaying a tourist visa provides, aggressively prosecute the fraud that allows abuse like the disgusting āgift shopsā littering cities now, maintaining the sunset on GV through property investment, while protecting the rights of investors and philanthropists that have helped improve social services, industry and middle class jobs for Portugal. Unfortunately itās government we are talking about, so what results from this god only knowsā¦
Pure magic!
