Daughter of a Brazilian woman in Portugal is left without a residence permit due to cognitive impairment

Brazilian daughter’s daughter in Portugal is left without a residence permit Brazilian Silvia Basilio moved to Portugal in 2022 with her husband and two children in search of more security. But the family says that not everyone was able to integrate in the same way. ✅ Follow the g1 international news channel on WhatsApp According to Silvia, her daughter, now 25 years old and diagnosed with cognitive impairment, never obtained a residence permit in the country. “Portugal embraced us. Me, my husband and my son. But they excluded my daughter from that embrace”, she states. The young woman has difficulties with recent memory and is unable to adapt to different everyday situations. She cannot be alone or move around unaccompanied. Without documentation, he ended up in a kind of migratory limbo. To understand the case, it is necessary to consider a rule that was in force between 2017 and 2024: the so-called Expression of Interest. The mechanism allowed immigrants to request a residence permit in Portuguese territory through a promise or work contract. Parents or caregivers could make the request, but the process required employment. This point generated the impasse in the case of Silvia’s daughter. Because she was unable to work and was already over 18 years old, she was unable to regularize herself. Without a home, the young woman was also, according to her mother, without access to basic rights, such as healthcare and higher education. “I even wonder if we really made the right choice in coming here, because of this frustration of not being able to see my daughter doing something she likes, which is studying”, says Silvia. Case is not isolated People walk through Praça do Comércio in Lisbon, Portugal, Tuesday, April 12, 2022 AP Photo/Armando Franca There are hundreds of thousands of pending processes related to the Expression of Interest in Portugal. Many are teenagers and young adults who moved with their families during the period in which the law was in effect. The official deadline for regularization was 90 days, but there are people who have been waiting for years. Lawyer Priscila Ferreira states that the problem also lies in the structure of the Portuguese migration system, which dates back to the 1990s. “There is a management deficiency, and it is serious. And this impacts the lives of immigrants”, she states. Priscila follows thousands of requests, including dozens of cases from Brazilian mothers trying to regularize their children’s situation. One of them is Ludimila Carvalho, who faces difficulties in documenting her daughter, who has just reached adulthood. She fears that bureaucracy will compromise the young woman’s plans to study nursing. “This worries her a lot about wanting to go to college,” he says. The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, responsible for residence permits in Portugal, states that the delays are caused by the large volume of pending processes. Currently, around 628 thousand Brazilians live in the country. Itamaraty informed DW that it monitors the cases and provides “possible assistance”. According to the organization, the topic has been taken to meetings attended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In the case of Silvia’s daughter, the lawyer is trying to obtain specific authorization from Portuguese courts for people with disabilities or those who need medical care. See more: LaGuardia Airport, in NY, reopens after collision, but will operate at reduced capacity ‘for some time’, says Trump’s secretary British police ask for international help in the search for a Brazilian missing in England What’s behind the chaos at US airports

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