Vitorino “on the verge of making a decision” while feeding the presidential elephant

António Vitorino was there to “talk about migration in general and not about migration to Belém”, but the subject was so unavoidable that he himself had fun, during his various interventions during the debate in the auditorium of the Faculty of Law, fueling the suspense about a possible presidential candidacy. He told journalists that he was “ on the verge of making a decision” and assured that, in the meantime, he had no intention of “creating instability” in the PS.

“I don’t want to create any suspense .” Confronted by journalists as he left the SEDES Jovem conference on the future of the country, Vitorino twice denied any intention of “creating instability”: “I have my own decision-making process and I ask that you respect it.” He then left, without meeting the speaker who, by that time, had already filled the auditorium for the day: Gouveia e Melo.

The last two days of politics were marked by the conference that brought together the current presidential candidates and Vitorino chose not to ignore the elephant in the room (and even threw some peanuts at it). As soon as he picked up the microphone, at the conference panel dedicated to migration, he spoke about the “expectations created” around the event: “I assume it’s because of the parade of speakers”. And he even mentioned a friend who, perhaps for this reason, gave him some advice: “See if such a toxic topic harms you” . “I don’t know what I was thinking that could harm me. I think the opposite: if we want to think about Portugal without taboos, we have to think about migration.”

Vitorino joins presidential candidates parade at SEDES. And also on the PS agenda

In four interventions, during the hour-long debate alongside MEP Paulo Cunha and Law professor Ana Rita Gil, the socialist took the area in which he moves like a fish in water to try to touch on other points that go beyond it and even agree and disagree with the Government in office: “There is nothing like maintaining balance in these things, who knows why…”

The so-called “balance” was between praising the government’s promotion of dialogue with the business world, to ensure “dignified” conditions for welcoming those who come from abroad to work in the country, and criticizing the ban on access to health services for immigrants in an irregular situation. “I think it’s wrong,” said Vitorino, who considered this “a very sensitive and crucial issue for ensuring integration.”

But the deepest cut was in the “populist” discourse, with the first indication in this direction appearing in the first minutes of the speech, when he threw out the “fantasy that immigrants come to live at the expense of the Social State”, pointing to the figures: “There were 700 million benefits for Social Security”. And it didn’t stop there, later he raised his tone to talk about the “lazy, demagogic and easy way” of solving problems “by blaming immigrants”.

A battle that he also fought when he left the country and moved to the European perspective when it came to the refugees entering these borders. He defended European “solidarity” and tried to deconstruct the “perception” of a wave of refugees by saying that “there are 40 million refugees and, of these, 80% are in developing countries (Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Turkey), the number in Europe and the developed world is tiny compared to the overall number of refugees on a planetary scale”.

In defending “migration policies that benefit from a broad consensus”, Vitorino also spoke of the “noise on the air” that currently exists, that is, “the populist temptation to make immigrants the scapegoat for all the country’s social ills when they are not the result of immigrants”. The statement was still within the limits of his position as president of the National Council for Migration and Asylum, but Vitorino wanted to go beyond that and listed these “social ills”.

“Low productivity, doubts about how the social elevator works, the aging of the population, the loss of qualifications and the emigration of young Portuguese people,” the socialist said about the country. As for those who want to enter, Vitorino argues that the response should not be through the “easy policy of 'come whoever comes'”, but rather a “proactive, not reactive, migration policy”.

“We need to have a positive attitude when recruiting immigrants,” he said, while praising the dialogue that the government wants to establish with business associations. His approach follows Canada’s example and involves first looking for “needs or opportunities that exist” in the country — and that “enhance the immigrants’ ability to achieve their goals” — and establishing “the necessary support to guarantee a migratory flow that responds to the desire of people who want to enter, but that also responds to the reception needs.”

As for the rest, it has been left for “soon”, in a wait that has left some socialists — not very inclined towards the hypothesis of António José Seguro already being in the presidential field — expectant and excited to see Vitorino appear on a panel like the one that took place at the Faculty of Law over the last two days. But without certainty that he can have a reading beyond that.