A new petition calling on the Portuguese government to “immediately” block all plans to take in refugees has gathered 2000 signatures in a matter of hours.
When the Resident first caught sight this morning of the “Pelo fim imediato da entrada de refugiados em Portugal” petition (literal translation: For the immediate stop of entry of refugees in Portugal), on the national “petição pública” site, it had 6,107 signatories.
By this afternoon, that number had risen to 8,040.
Every time we returned to the site to click on it, the number of people signing had increased.
Started by Salvador Costa from a gmail address the petition is based on the fact that Portugal has “more than two million people on the absolute limit of poverty; 150,000 children who go hungry; unemployment of more than 20% of which more than 70,000 are graduates; is on the tail end of Europe when it comes to family incomes and has an enormous level of homeless people”.
Other reasons given are the elevated levels of personal debt “due to the crisis” that has “forced people to give up their homes, cars and other property to banks because they cannot not keep up with instalment payments”, as well as “the impossibility to get any kind of loan to remake family or professional lives”.
“It is not right” says the text. It is an “affront to people living miserably” that refugees stand to receive integration subsidies, homes, free electricity and other perks.
As we wrote this article, another 24 people had signed the petition.
As it went to the web department, that number had increased by 10.
photo credits: http://peticaopublica.com
