The dramatic situation of hundreds of young Timor nationals duped into taking out loans to travel to Portugal for jobs and accommodation that do not exist is high on the agenda of the presidents of Portugal and Timor today, in conjunction with prime minister António Costa. Timor’s president José Ramos-Horta is in Lisbon on an official visit. Conversations will focus on this embarrassing drama – embarrassing because during his last official visit to Timor, Marcelo was actually filmed encouraging young nationals to ‘come to Portugal’. Since then, the situation in Portugal has become a ‘humanitarian crisis’: on Friday alone another 200 young Timor nationals arrived in this country, to find the ‘possibilities’ they believed were awaiting them had been written on the wind.
