In this last week of October it would be expected to write about the State Budget, which has just been approved in general and which is now entering the specialty process in parliament. And I would love to do that: to write about budgetary measures that have an impact on all of our lives, on the price of houses and what we eat, on the resources for the National Health Service and Education to work, on how we transform the country into a prosperous economy that works for everyone. And I will write, soon. I’m not doing it today because another approval took place this week in parliament: changes to the nationality law. In fact, it wasn’t just in the same week, it was on the very day of debate and voting on the State Budget, which in itself is quite revealing of how the government’s and PSD’s priorities are.
It’s revealing but not surprising. The proposal for changes to the nationality law was the government’s first proposal sent to the Assembly of the Republic shortly after taking office. It was proposal number 1 from a government in a country with a very serious housing crisis, where so many people are struggling to survive until the end of the month and where the National Health Service fails to provide the response that everyone deserves. And numbers 2 and 3 are about foreigners. And they all had a very short, rushed discussion, without the time or availability necessary to listen to the entities, people, associations that always have to be involved in changes to laws that affect them. We know very well where this desire on the part of the government and the PSD comes from: it comes from an attempt to occupy a space that the arrival created. The problem is that this space is one of hatred and division, which should be rejected by any democratic and humanist party. But no, the PSD tries to occupy this space and, worse, allies itself with the arrival to expand it. With the contribution of the remaining right-wing parties.
The Nationality Law is too important to be treated like this. This week a law was approved which, in addition to being unfair and encouraging prejudice, is poorly designed, such is the eagerness for its approval.
This new law has several problems but I will only focus on one aspect. There is a basic rule that I think should guide any political action, regardless of the political situation in which we find ourselves: that no child should be unprotected or have their rights diminished. This rule was broken several times here: either because it makes it more difficult for a child born and living in Portugal for several years (not knowing another country) to have Portuguese nationality, or because it does not automatically attribute Portuguese nationality to children adopted by Portuguese parents – in fact contradicting the equivalence that should always occur between filiation and adoption. Children are more unprotected with the new law. But more than that: children are left unprotected by the way this law was made with those who have no shame in using children’s names to tell them that they are not welcome in Portugal, with those who have no shame in filling the country with billboards that convey to any gypsy child or family with origins in Bangladesh that they do not belong here.
A country and a nationality are not built on attacking and unprotecting children. Minister Leitão Amaro said that, with the approval of this nationality law, Portugal becomes more Portugal. I’m sorry but no. My Portugal is the Portugal of empathy, of mutual help between neighbors, of collective responsibility for each child’s childhood.
Parliamentary leader of Livre
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