The published decree-law "changes Law No. 23/2007, of July 4, revoking the residence authorization procedures based on expressions of interest", as stated in the published summary.

A 2017 amendment to the foreigners law allowed, "through an expression of interest, the regularization of the stay in national territory, through the exercise of a subordinate or independent professional activity, without a valid visa for this purpose", under parts of articles 88 and 89.

In the now-published decree-law, the government considers that the "possibility of regularizing immigrants who were not in possession of a consular residence visa" was a "thoughtless" measure that compromised "the principles assumed by Portugal and by European partners in the Schengen Area".

After entry, it would be possible to enter the "general regime for obtaining residence permits, with the registration of expression of interest and the mere promise of an employment contract being sufficient for this purpose".

In 2019, a new amendment was made to articles 88 and 89, which allowed the regularization of immigrants provided they had "regularized their situation before social security for at least twelve months".

"With these changes, it was clearly admitted the possibility of any foreign citizen remaining in national territory, even if they had entered the country illegally", states the now-published decree-law.

The Government says that there has been "an exponential growth in legalization requests through this channel, which, unfortunately, are largely an instrument used by criminal networks linked to human trafficking and aiding illegal immigration".

For the Government, these changes "strongly contributed to a perverse call effect, given that they opened the way for certain migratory circuits with promises of entry and regularization in a Member State of the European Union for migrants in an irregular situation, often leading to conditions of manifest vulnerability".

The "abusive and systematic recourse to this mechanism, associated with the enormous demand, the vicissitudes of the lengthy extinction process of the Foreigners and Borders Service and the ineffective distribution of the respective resources and attributions by various pre-existing entities and to be created, contributed to the situation in which the country finds itself", as stated in the now-published decree-law.

The diploma therefore orders the "revocation of residence authorization instruments based on the mere expression of interest, safeguarding, however, the situation of foreign citizens who have already initiated residence authorization procedures under those instruments".

The decree-law was announced on Monday afternoon, at 4:45 pm, by the Prime Minister, was promulgated by the President less than three hours later and was published before midnight to enter into force today.

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, justified the rapid promulgation, "bearing in mind the urgent situation of regularization of many thousands of pending residence authorization processes".

The Migration Action Plan, approved by the Council of Ministers, includes the "end of the exceptional regime that has allowed entry without rules, extinguishing the so-called expression of interest procedure", considered an "open door and source of many pending issues".

The plan also includes the "reinforcement of the response and processing capacity of consular posts identified as priorities", with the reinforcement of 45 elements in 15 countries, a list that includes all the countries of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP).

Among the 41 measures provided for in the plan, there is also the transformation of the current mobility visa for CPLP immigrants into a community visa (Schengen), which allows for circulation within the European Union, and the creation of a Foreigners and Borders Unit (UEF) in the PSP to monitor the presence of immigrants and create emergency response centers.

Also Read: Migration plan? Learn about all the measures (and everything that has been said) (Portuguese version)