The candidate for Belém Henrique Gouveia e Melo completely distances himself from the anti-immigration discourse, even if this means losing votes in the presidential race.
In an interview with the Lusa agency, when faced with the possibility of the speech against immigrants gaining votes, the former chief of the Armada General Staff responds: “Then I will lose votes.”
“Immigration is not a problem, it is an opportunity”
Citing economic studies, the retired admiral indicates that Portugal, to reach the top of the European countries, “needs to grow at least 3% per year, that is if Europe grows between 1 and 1.5%”.
“And we are growing 1.5% or less per year”, he pointed out, adding: “the Portuguese economy has to develop and we need immigrants to develop this economy“, he declared, pointing out the fundamental contributions of this community also towards balancing the Social Security balance and so that pensions can continue to be paid.
“We need immigrants to develop. Immigration is not a problem, it is an opportunity”, he emphasized.
Despite intending to combat anti-immigration “hate speech”, Gouveia e Melo rejects a Manichean policy of “yes” or “no” towards immigrants, demonstrating against the entry of foreigners who promote intoleranceas is the case with violence against women.
But also rejects a relationship between immigration and crimearguing that the “keyword” in this area should be “integration”.
“I’m rational. If they prove to me that there is a set of immigration that is harmful to the State, of course I don’t want this immigration, but they have to prove to me, it’s not because I don’t like immigrants, or because the Portuguese population is upset with a type of immigrants and thinks that all immigrants are bad”, he said.
For the admiral, the immigration policy must involve verifying which foreigners can transform Portugal into a “higher value economy” added, more productive” and avoid those that “make labor cheaper and allow lower-value companies to continue to prosper”.
“The Portuguese population cannot forget one thing: that emigrants sent more money to Portugal per year than all the funds in the European Union. We depend not only on immigrants here, who contribute to our economy and social security, but we also depend a lot on our emigrants who were accepted in other societies”.