"We, as a government, have a lot to do and a lot to repair and a lot to correct in the migration policy. Today, in Portugal, we have thousands of people who chose this country to live and work, who are now living in undignified conditions", said the minister to journalists.

The Minister of the Presidency pointed out the need to resolve situations of immigrants who are being harmed by delays in processes, due to the lack of decent housing and because of "very difficult work situations".

Leitão Amaro's statements came during a joint visit by several members of the Government to Viseu, to celebrate 20 years since the National Museum Grão Vasco reopened to the public.

In addition, the minister considered that in recent years "there have been errors in public policies", such as the dismantling of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) "in an unplanned, careless way", which, in his opinion, has jeopardised "the process of integrating populations and immigrants" and the response capacity of the services.

In the various criticisms of the SEF dismantling process, the minister considered that this resulted in a "heavy legacy" that was left to the current executive, pointing to problems with air borders and to 400,000 processes and authorisations pending.

"There are authorisations that reach their renewal deadlines and people have no response, there is an inadequate integration system for those who are already here, all of this needs a response", defended Leitão Amaro.

In this sense, the social-democratic political leader guaranteed that "the error and the worrying demonstrations in migration policies will be resolved by this Government".

"The response that we have to give regarding the relationship with immigration is this: to fix a situation of collapse in the institutional apparatus and of successive errors in migration policies", he said.

The minister announced that next Wednesday he will be in meetings with the parliamentary groups to gather contributions and present a plan for migrations "that works, that is reasonable, that is balanced", but also for a reception and integration system "that is humane and that works".

Questioned by journalists, Leitão Amaro did not want to comment on the position of the President of the Assembly of the Republic (AR), José Aguiar-Branco, during an intervention by the president of Chega, André Ventura, in parliament.

On Friday, in parliament, the leader of Chega caused an incident when he questioned the 10 years planned for the construction of the new airport, saying: "We can be much better than the Turks, than the Chinese, than the Albanians, we will have an airport in five years".

"The Istanbul airport was built and operationalised in five years, the Turks are not exactly known for being the hardest working people in the world", Ventura had started by saying, under protests from several benches, with Aguiar-Branco asking to let him continue his intervention because "the deputy has freedom of expression to express himself".

"If I, no matter how much I wanted to answer your curiosity, were to answer your question in the terms in which you ask it, I would be participating in a discussion in which the Government has no place", said the Minister of the Presidency.

Despite not wanting to comment on José Aguiar-Branco's position, Leitão Amaro defended that Portugal "must be a country of freedom of expression" and "a country of tolerance, a country of humanism, of a culture of freedom".

"On the part of the Government, we respect and value freedom as a principle, tolerance and moderation as a practice in political activity", he added.

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