The Support Program for Voluntary Return and Reintegration (ARVoRe VIII), which results from the cooperation between the Portuguese Government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) aims to ensure that immigrants in Portugal who need and want to return voluntarily to their country of origin can do so in a dignified and safe manner, and also be supported in their reintegration upon arrival.
Over the several years of the programme's existence, Vasco Malta says that “vulnerable situations have always existed”, which is why people needed support to return.
But “what we have seen in recent months [entre janeiro e outubro deste ano] these are people who are either homeless or victims of domestic violence or human trafficking, and who unfortunately are in an extreme situation”, stressed the head of the IOM mission in Portugal.
And “what we have analyzed in recent months, with regard to the return, is situations of greater and extreme vulnerability”, he added in statements to Lusa.
All of this for IOM, said the official, “is very worrying” and stems from three factors identified by most people who use the program: unemployment or difficulty in accessing the labor market, difficulties in regularization and the economic situation in which they live.
Perhaps for the same reasons, the number of return requests also skyrocketed to values identical to those of the Covid-19 pandemic year, 2020.
Between January and October of this year, the total number of people enrolled in this program reached 752, of which 687 were Brazilian. Of those who requested support for their return and reintegration in these first ten months of the year, 261 have already returned to their country of origin, which in the case of 243 of these is Brazil.
Already in the same period of 2021 there were only 288 registered immigrants, of which 219 were Brazilians.
In some cases, there is even a combination of the three factors.
But for the IOM there is still a fourth factor that leads to all this, “a lack of preparation in the migration process”.
“What we have seen is that many of these people are deluded, with what they have seen on some social networks or Whatsapp groups, with a social and economic reality that is clearly not the one they find in Portugal, and that explains why 30% of the people who look for us are still in the first year of migration and 37% in the second year”, defended Vasco Malta.
Other people, as it has been reported, “were victims of some networks and scammed, they pay a certain amount to someone to proceed with their processes and, unfortunately, these entities end up with the money without giving any kind of progress to the process. ”, he also mentioned.
Faced with these situations and the vulnerability of Brazilian immigrants who ask to return, last September, the IOM mission in Portugal traveled to Brazil to meet with the Government and institutions in the country linked to the migration process and alerted them to all these aspects.
The purpose of the trip “was to draw attention to three aspects”, he told Lusa Vasco Malta.
One was to talk about the project to support voluntary return and its numbers, another was to alert to the importance of public policies to help people who return under the program to Brazil and a third was to alert to “the need to greater guidance and
awareness for safe and informed emigration to Portugal”, he specified.
“We know that Brazil has an information program, for example, with the United States of America and we warn of the effective need to create, I would not say an exactly equal program, but the possibility of those citizens who want to travel to Portugal who do it in an informed way”, he said.
According to Vasco Malta, the Brazilian authorities were open to hearing the IOM, which on the part of the Government was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
But what is being done now is that IOM Portugal, in conjunction with the IOM mission in Brazil, are seeking to continue these bilateral conversations, “to ensure that this topic of return can be on the political agenda and in the design of policies “Brazilian public authorities”, he concluded, that is, for now there is still no answer.
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