Portugal to deport 18,000 foreigners residing illegally.
Portugal has announced plans to expel around 18,000 foreigners living in the country without legal permits of authorization, a minister said ahead of snap election.

Portugal to deport 18,000 foreigners residing illegally.
Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro said the government will issue notifications telling some 4,500 people living illegally in the nation that they have 20 days to leave.
f they decide not to leave voluntarily, then they will be deported, Amaro stressed.
Last week, Amaro was quoted in the local press as saying that “Portugal needs to review its deportation system, which doesn’t work”.
It is important to realise that Portugal is one of the three countries in Europe that executes the fewest deportations of people who were ordered to leave for violating the rules, including for security reasons,” he said.
The announcement comes in the build-up to Portugal’s snap general election, scheduled to be held on 18 May.
Local reports say that Amaro stressed that the notifications to leave the country are because people have come to the country “violating Portuguese and European rules”.
“A state governed by the rule of law needs to draw the consequences of what the law says, and what the law says is to give notice to leave the country voluntarily, within a period of up to 20 days,
after which the so-called coercive removal must take place,” he added.
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro called an early election after his minority government was ousted in a no-confidence vote, prompting his resignation. Montenegro, who became leader of the Social Democratic Party less than a year ago, faced scrutiny over a possible conflict of interest linked to a family law firm’s financial ties to a company awarded a major gambling license. In an attempt to defuse the controversy, he pushed for new elections, but opposition parties united to topple his fragile two-party coalition, which controlled only 80 of the 230 parliamentary seats.