Lisbon stops legalisation of immigrants after avalanche of a

[archigabe]

http://euobserver.com/9/24668/?rk=1


A new Portuguese law regularising illegal immigrants has been suspended only a few weeks after coming into effect following huge interest from hopeful immigrants.

In the first five days after the law came into effect on 3 August, the government's Service of Foreigners and Borders (SEF) – which is responsible for carrying out the legalisation process – registered 900,000 calls while immigrants from Spain and Italy joined the queue outside the building, reports Portuguese daily the Público.

[Christophe]

A couple of interesting things further down in the article From the EU Observer:

According to the government in Lisbon, the law was suspended because they detected it had a so-called "calling effect" seeing immigrants arriving from other parts of Europe and because certain "intermediates without scruples" were taking advantage of the "extraordinary regulation".

I wonder that it is not possible for the authorities to insist on some sort of evidence of living in Portugal from applicants - even most illegal immigrants (not all, of course) would be able to produce some sort of evidence, although that would inevitably increase the administrative workload - and it might also have the side-effect of denying regularisation to some people who are, in fact, living in Portugal.

And secondly, I wonder what an "intermediate without scruples" is: sounds as if someone has attempted a direct translation of a term from the Portuguese, but it doesn't seem to mean much in English...

[avjones]

Unscrupulous intermediaries, AKA people smugglers?

[Christophe]

Unscrupulous intermediaries, AKA people smugglers?

Possibly yes: it must mean something like that! And that interpretation is certainly plausible.