The number of Angolan citizens residing in Portugal has increased by more than 50% in the last ten years, from 20,366 in 2012 to 31,435 in 2022, according to data from the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) compiled by Lusa .
Angola was among the five most representative nationalities in Portugal as of December 31, 2012, after Brazil, Ukraine, Cape Verde and Romania, with a total of 20,366 resident citizens.
Ten years later, another 11,069 Angolans chose Portugal to reside, totaling 31,435, of which more than half preferred Lisbon (17,440), followed by Setúbal (5,821) and Porto (2,285).
The cities of Braga (905), Santarém (893) and Coimbra, with 712 inhabitants, have less than a thousand Angolans living there.
Madeira (40), the Azores (41), Portalegre (57) and Guarda (59) are the localities with the fewest Angolan residents.
Last year’s data, made available to Lusa by the SEF, indicates that most Angolans residing in Portugal are young people between the ages of 20 and 39, totaling 12,158 citizens.
Angolans between the ages of 40 and 64 (10,150 citizens) were the second largest age group residing in Portugal, in 2022.
At least 7,071 Angolans under the age of 19 resided in Portugal last year, including 308 Angolans aged 80 and over.
Also according to the SEF, 54 Angolans made applications for international protection in 2022, but were not accepted by the Portuguese migration authorities because they were “unfounded”.
In Luanda, the desire of Angolan citizens, especially young people, to emigrate to Portugal, which they consider “the door to Europe”, in search of better living conditions, studies and employment , due to the “lack of hope” in the African country, is growing.
The “lack of hope” in Angola motivated a group of young people to create the so-called “Civic Movement Let’s Leave Angola”, centered on the exchange of information on emigration, with Canada, Turkey, Portugal and Brazil among the targeted destinations.
The movement created a month ago by more than 20 young students and workers, who also wish to emigrate, serves as a channel for information on internal and external emigration procedures, from processing passports to visas for the country of destination, as previously reported to Lusa.
Dozens of mostly young Angolans fill the facilities of the new Portugal Visa Center in Luanda in endless queues seeking information, passports and/or visa applications. visas for Portugal.
Angolan sociologist Luzia Moniz estimated last week that the “exodus” of young “qualified” Angolans and their families to Portugal and other parts of Europe is the result of the current political and economic “bad governance” of the country, fearing a “recolonization” in Angola.
According to Luzia Moniz, the current emigration of young Angolans, with “a disappointed hope” for the general elections of 2022, is different from that recorded in the second half of the 1980s, when the latter, the less qualified majority, emigrated to escape from alignment with war.
“That’s why they were the least qualified and that’s why almost all or most of them ended up doing jobs, such as public and private works, precisely because of their lack of qualification,” he said. he told Lusa.
Today, the phenomenon “is different, people are not running away from the possibility of going to the battlefield, but are running away from the lack of social, economic and political conditions in the country”, he stressed.
“Bad governance, this bad model that the country has adopted politically and economically, is what is now pushing many young people to flee,” said the journalist, also based in Portugal.
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