section_path: Demographics/Immigration
section_name: Immigration
paragraph_text: Immigration
  
  Historically a country of emigration, Portugal has been a net recipient of immigrants since the early 21st century. As of 2024, legal resident foreigners number 1,546,521, or approximately 14% of the population; these figures do not include more than 340,000 resident foreigners who acquired Portuguese citizenship between 2008 and 2022—and thus constitute around 3.27% of the country's population in 2022. That year, almost 21,000 foreign residents acquired Portuguese citizenship, of which 11,170 were female and 9,674 were male.
  
  Until the late 20th century, immigrants came primarily from former Portuguese territories in India, Africa, and East Asia. Since the 1990s, economic growth, particularly in the construction industry, brought an influx of Ukrainians, Brazilians, and other Africans. Other sizeable groups include Romanians, Moldovans, Kosovo Albanians, Russians, Bulgarians, Chinese, Venezuelans, Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis. Net immigration persisted even during the COVID-19 Pandemic, when the emigration rate increased to 6.9% in 2022 but remained well below the immigration rate of around 11.3%; Among those that had left the country, 56.8% returned within a year.
  
  It is estimated that over 30,000 seasonal, often illegal immigrants work in agriculture, mainly southern cities such as Odemira, where they are often exploited by organised seasonal workers' networks. These migrants, who frequently arrive without due documentation or work contracts, make up over 90% of agricultural workers in southern Portugal. Most are Southeast Asians from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Thailand; in the interior of the Alentejo there are many African workers. Significant numbers also come from Eastern Europe, including Moldova, Ukraine, Romania and Brazil.
  
  A significant number of EU citizens, mostly from Italy, France, Germany, and other northern European countries, have become permanent residents. There is also a large expatriate community made up of Britons, Canadians and Americans. The British community is mostly composed of retired pensioners who live in the Algarve and Madeira.
  
  A National Statistics Institute (INE) study conducted between 2022 and 2023 found out that 1.4 million people (13% of the population) have immigrant background, in which 947,500 are first generation immigrants, concentrated mainly in the Lisbon metropolitan area and the Algarve. As the survey was limited to people living legally in the country for at least one year at the time of the interview, the statistical office suggests that 16.1% of the country's population, or 1,683,829 people, were first generation immigrants.