By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Aug 7 2002 (IPS)

Portugal has long been the destination of immigrants from its former colonies in Africa and Latin America, but today is increasingly chosen by people from Eastern Europe who are leaving their own countries in search of a better standard of living.

Portugal’s level of industrialisation is modest compared to that of most other countries of the European Union (EU), but its gross domestic product (GDP) of 13,200 dollars per capita is four times greater than even the most promising GDPs of the region’s former socialist nations.

Immigration from Eastern Europe, and particularly from the dismantled Soviet Union, is fuelled by the creation of jobs resulting from EU funds for modernising Portugal’s infrastructure. The bloc is making an effort to bridge the development gap between this country and its 14 EU partners.

The injection of financial resource has made Portugal the EU country with the most active construction sector, which increases the demand for specialised workers. But many doctors, engineers, attorneys and dentists from Eastern Europe are also applying for jobs at these major construction works.

Most of the immigrants from the former Soviet republics who are granted authorisation to live in Portugal come from Ukraine, Moldavia, Belarus, Georgia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, in descending order.

In the bigger Portuguese cities, more and more publications are cropping up in Russian, the common language of the former Soviet Union.

Some newspapers, like Slobo and Nasha Gazeta, published in Lisbon, have a circulation of more than 30,000, which is a third of the circulation of Oporto’s Jornal de Noticias, the country’s largest newspaper.

And in bookshop windows it is not unusual to find books with titles in the Cyrillic characters of Russian.

Also, certain foods, like bitter cabbage, and beverages, including Russian vodka and beer, are stocked by the main supermarket chains in Portugal.

Immigrants from the former Portuguese colonies of Brazil and Cape Verde used to constitute the largest groups of foreigners with legal residence in Portugal, representing a total of 1.9 percent of the country’s population of 10 million.

Today, Brazil has been surpassed by Ukraine. The total proportion of foreigners has climbed to 4.1 percent of the population, and 65 percent of immigrants come from Eastern Europe, according to figures from the government’s immigration and border service, known by its Portuguese initials, SEF.

“The desire to integrate ourselves into Portuguese society is great, but so is nostalgia for our own culture,” a worker, who spoke on behalf of a group of Ukrainian immigrants shopping at a Lisbon supermarket, told IPS.

Several in the group had travelled throughout Europe looking for a job that would provide an income to support their families back in Ukraine.

They said the Portuguese coast seems to be the final frontier, the last hope, though many hope to cross the Atlantic someday and live in the United States.

Others, like Ukrainian Gennadi Starskov, who was able to learn Portuguese in 10 months, hope to build their lives in Portugal. “The people treat us with kindness and solidarity, and if we are lucky, we will continue to find good jobs in construction,” he said.

But the immigration laws approved — or on their way to approval — by the EU countries stand in the way of full integration of a foreigner in society, say analysts.

The governments of the European bloc “are giving in to the political agenda of the extreme right,” according to columnist Teresa de Sousa, with the Lisbon-based daily, Público.

The government of Italy, under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, “treats the legal immigrant as a mere source of labour, without any other rights except to work or to be expelled,” and Portugal’s Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao is following that trend, says De Sousa.

Jose Manuel Fernandes, editor of Público newspaper, says Portugal should not adopt “the Italian model”, which he describes as treating the immigrant “like a disposable worker. It borders on xenophobia.”

“The old Europe does not have a tradition of integrating the immigrant, anyone who is different. On the contrary, its historical tradition is to expel them” when their numbers become excessive, said Fernandes.

The Ukrainians with legal residence in Portugal numbered 63,553 as of June, reports the SEF.

The Ukrainian consul in Portugal, Oleg Trykozensko, estimates that, all told, legal and illegal immigrants from his country total 200,000, “in other words, the size of an average Ukrainian city.”

The more than 300,000 foreigners with legal residence could reach a sum closer to 700,000 if “the illegal residents of all nationalities are counted,” a SEF official, who requested anonymity, told IPS.

Most of the clandestine immigrants come from the former Portuguese colonies (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Sao Tome-Principe and East Timor), and they are difficult for the police to identify as foreigners because of their fluency in Portuguese.

Nevertheless, criminal groups in Eastern Europe and local construction firms have actively promoted illegal immigration of workers from that region, according to various denunciations.

The salaries of clandestine immigrants average just a third of what a Portuguese citizen or legal foreign resident earns.

These workers do not have written contracts and they often work in conditions of near slavery because they do not hold labour protection rights to unemployment benefits, social security, medical attention, or vacation, according to news reports.

And immigrant rights activists charge that the illegal residents are often reported to authorities by the immigrant traffickers themselves to expel them from the country.

Former prime minister Antonio Guterres (1995-2002) pushed through legislation that legalised the status of immigrant workers who lacked the appropriate documentation, a law that employers had requested.

Portugal has the lowest productivity of all EU countries and “must stake its bets on immigration” from Eastern Europe, which serves as “a window of opportunity to make a big leap in development,” said sociologist Maria Baganha.

But associations representing immigrants from Africa and Brazil complained last month that more than 90 percent of the jobs offered to immigrants “targeted Ukrainians, Rumanians, Russians and Moldavians.”

Rui Viana, president of the Civil Construction Association, said, “Not all immigrants are equal. The Africans are more difficult to work with and are generally illiterate, while those from Eastern Europe are better educated and include better professionals.”

A socialist lawmaker in the Portuguese Congress, Fernando Ka, who was born in Guinea-Bissau, accused the business association of “racial discrimination” and of favouring Eastern Europeans because “they agree to work at any price and any hour.”

The immigrants from Eastern Europe “are more docile with the bosses… but the Africans and Brazilians know the language and are better able work within the labour market,” stated Ka, a spokesman the Luso-African community in Portugal.

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