The Constitutional Court (TC) of Portugal declared unconstitutional on Friday (8) points of the migratory reform approved on July 16 by the Portuguese Parliament. Then, the president of the country, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, vetoed the law, which will now be returned to the legislature.
According to information from the newspaper Diário de Notícias, the TC pointed out that excerpts from the so-called Foreign Law that restricts access to the family regrouping of immigrants, who could only request it after two years of legal residence in the country, and the limitation to trigger the agency for integration, migrations and asylum (AIMA) in court are in disagreement with the Constitution.
The President of the Court, José João Abrantes, stated that the TC considered that the part of the law that does not include spouses on family regrouping “may impose the breakdown of the nuclear family of foreign citizen holding the valid residence authorization and is therefore subjective to lead to the separation of members of the constituted family.”
Regarding the period of two years, Abrantes said that the court understood that “it is incompatible with constitutionally due protection to the family.”
The judge also stated that the deadline stipulated in the law so that the requests for family regrouping are analyzed within nine months (currently 90 days) was considered unconstitutional because “it is not compatible with the protection duties of the family to which the state is linked.”
Shortly after the announcement of the TC, the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who had sent the law for analysis of the court in late July, vetoed the matter.
This week, the government of the Premier of Portugal, Luís Montenegro, whose party, the Social Democrat (PSD), joined the arrival to approve the reform in July, had already announced that he would correct the unconstitutionalities that were pointed out by the TC and send the law again to vote.
