Portugal is a nation of migrants, of emigrants and immigrants. Situated at the edge of the land, we have always been a country of migrants. We are all aware of the massive historical movements of people, from the barbarians to the Age of Discoveries, to the "Brazilians" of the 19th century and the "cardboard suitcase" migrants of the latter half of the 20th century. However, the phenomenon is not just a distant memory. Since the year 2000, 640,000 people have left Portugal, and nearly one and a half million have entered. We remain a nation of migrants, as always.
It can therefore be said that no one understands the dramas of mobility quite like we do. This means that the Portuguese know, or should know, something that seems to escape the vast majority of the planet: the immigrant is a person, with feelings and worries, dreams and plans, family and friends. It is out of love for their own that they undertake the costly and dangerous journey, and endure miserable living conditions. In this sense, the Portuguese should tremble with indignation when they see other countries treating foreigners like cattle, or worse, like viruses.
In this globalised world, especially in the West which considers itself civilised, there is a strange blindness when it comes to the foreigner, especially if they come from outside the West. The usual rules of behaviour do not seem to apply. For example, people feel entitled to do things to them that they would not want done to themselves. Of course, to justify this, an adjective is added, such as "illegal." Once someone becomes an "illegal immigrant," it suddenly becomes acceptable to violate the most basic principles of decency.
What is never said is that this law has nothing to do with crime, or even disobedience. It was created on purpose to make the immigrant illicit, and so put public conscience to sleep. In this way, we assure ourselves that we have nothing against foreigners, only against illegals, who are exactly the same as the others. Anyone who commits a crime, whether local or foreign, should be punished. But here, the law is made not against wrongdoing, but specifically against the person, no matter what they do. Even breathing becomes a violation. If the same law were applied to nationals, how many would be illegal?
These ignominies do not happen by chance. They are the result of the problems caused by immigration, the same problems that these countries have with Portuguese immigrants. These problems have nothing to do with malice, idleness or parasitism. On the contrary, immigrants usually work hard, suffer humiliation and hardship, and take on the jobs that locals do not want to do. The real problems of immigration are two.
The first comes from the merchants of fear. These are politicians who, having no solutions to offer, abandon their programmes and prefer to exploit the fears of the population. These fears usually involve the rich, the corrupt, the revolutionaries and the foreigners. By channelling and concentrating public anger, they manage to gain notoriety, and sometimes even influence. In times of social change, these parasites always appear, like mosquitoes in summer.
The second problem comes from the cowardly moderates who, frightened by the rise of populists, forget their values and support the infamy. They believe that by doing so, they will win back the votes that fear campaigns took from them. They do not realise that, by confirming the demagogic fraud, they only give more strength to the radicals. Voters who favour discrimination usually prefer the genuine product over the opportunistic imitation.
If things like this should make a nation of migrants tremble with outrage, what can be said when we see them in a nation of migrants itself? Memory is short, and the arrival of that one and a half million has brought the same problems to our own doorstep. The most astonishing thing is that those who copy what is done abroad do not remember their own uncles, cousins, parents and grandparents who, when they were migrants, also had to endure those same indignities. And this in a country that calls itself civilised, democratic, even Christian. Those who act this way do follow the Gospel, but only the part about the Pharisees and the doctors of the law.
Worse still, in Portugal, the very country that should understand the cost of this better than any other, this blindness comes with added cruelty, born also of our usual national messiness. Our love of bureaucracy means that, in order not to be illegal, the immigrant must spend nights out in the cold in endless queues to obtain a saving stamp. Or rather, what used to be saving, because halfway through the line the rules might change, and suddenly another certificate is required. That is when the immigrant is not beaten to death by an inspector, or enslaved by an agricultural boss, both of whom are often descendants of former emigrants.
The way foreigners are treated will remain one of the darkest stains on the morality of this generation. But if that is true in Europe and America, it becomes sheer depravity when it happens in a nation of migrants.
João César das Neves, Professor at CATÓLICA-LISBON