Number of Nepalese Living in Portugal Increases Significantly
The number of Nepalese citizens who are considering Portugal as one of their favourite destinations to live and work there has marked a notable increase recently.
According to the Portugal News, the data provided by the Gabinete de Estratégia e Mar (GEE) reveals that there are more than 21,000 Nepalese in Portugal, making it the 11th largest immigrant community in Portugal,SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
In March of this year, the local media Diário de Notícias reported that the Hindu Community of Portugal may have over 50,000 Nepalese living in Portugal who are seeking help to legalize their presence in the country.
The GEE data also shows that Nepalis make up 3.3 per cent of the foreign community living in Portugal. Meanwhile, the largest number of them live in the district of Lisbon, with 11,853 inhabitants coming from Nepal, followed by Beja, Faro, and Setúbal, with around 2,000 inhabitants in each district.
Considering that Portugal has always been a welcoming country for receiving immigrants, many of them aim for this country to find a job and, to find better living conditions and, in most cases, send money to help their families who still live in the country where they were born.
In June, the Foreigners and Borders Service of Portugal, SEF, revealed that currently, around 700,000 foreigners are living legally in Portugal, with more expected to arrive.
The immigrant community who are mostly settled in Portugal comes from Brazil either to study or to work, since there is no language barrier, and therefore this makes moving to Portugal much easier than those who come from Nepal.
Moreover, looking at the provisional results of the 2021 population census, the number of foreign residents in Portugal increased by 40 per cent between 2011 and 2021, reaching 555,299 people.
In 2021, foreign nationals made up 5.4 per cent of the total population living in Portugal, compared to 2011, this figure was 3.7 per cent. However, third-country nationals (TCN) constituted 81.4 per cent of the total number of foreign nationals.
The regions of the Metropolitan Area of Algarve and Lisbon had the highest percentage of foreign citizens, where migrants represent respectively 14.7 per cent and 8.9 per cent of their population.
On the other hand, in 2011, this percentage was 11.6 per cent in the Algarve and 7.2 per cent in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon. While at the municipality level, the concentration of migrants is higher where they represented 28.6 per cent of the population in Odemira, 26.3 per cent in Aljezur, 26.1per cent in Vila do Bispo, 23.4 per cent in Lagos, and 20.4 per cent in Albufeira. In the city of Lisbon, this percentage is slightly greater than ten per cent.
Between the two censuses of 2011 and 2021, the native population of Portugal decreased by 2.1 per cent.
