Brazil to attract qualified workforce from overseas
The Brazilian government plans to attract qualified immigrants as part of a project under development at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, expected to be unveiled later this year.
“We hope to be launching it in the second half-year in a partnership between the Foreign Ministry and the Labor Ministry,” said Paulo Gustavo Lamsen de Sant’Anna, head of the Immigration Division and the Department for Immigration and Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
“We’re dedicating a lot of attention to the norm governing how this highly qualified workforce will be dealt with in the country. Brazil has never had an active policy directed at drawing this kind of professional—which is necessary for the development of every country and is highly sought-after worldwide,” Sant’Anna noted.
As part of the steps to achieve this goal, the Brazilian government intends to facilitate the entry of qualified foreigners by cutting red tape and ascertaining in which “strategic areas this can be done best,” he added.
Furthermore, Brazil is also expected to address the issue of family reunion—i.e., the situation facing those who come to the country to reunite with relatives. “A regulation in this connection is expected to be issued sometime later this week,” André Furquim, deputy director at the Justice Ministry Migration Department, told Agência Brasil.
Encouraging qualification
Diana Quintas, communication and marketing director at the Brazilian Association of International Migration and Mobility Specialists, refers to the enactment of these two pieces of legislation as key. The coming of professionally trained foreigners encourages “the local market to become more and more qualified,” she argued.
“While we have fewer than a million immigrants in Brazil, we have over 3 million Brazilians overseas. So the migration issue is still far from being a problem to us. If we see Brazil as a country that welcomes foreigners, it’s because investment has been made in Brazil. This is something that should boost our economy as well,” Quintas remarked.
She described the resolution on families as crucial, as “it will make it possible for applicants coming to work in Brazil to work, for example, to bring their family along in the same visa process.”
“Even today, we haven’t been able to do this together with the applicant’s visa process. This has made a significant impact on families coming to Brazil, as sometimes it goes beyond the deadline for their stay in the country, so people become irregular and are subsequently subject to a fine. [Family reunion] is covered in the decree, but it hasn’t been implemented yet, as a resolution is still pending,” she said.
New Migration Law
The new Migration Law was introduced in Brazil a year ago this week. In this period, “a lot of strides were made—like the implementation of the electronic visa—but the expansion of the law has been faced with a few difficulties,” said the head of the Immigration Division of the Immigration Department at the Foreign Ministry.
“We had come from a period of over 30 years with this system in the sector, and to change it now—including a change in a number of procedures—is difficult, burdensome, and time-consuming,” Sant’Anna said.
To the judgment of Hugo Gallo da Silva, chairman of the National Immigration Council and coordinator-general for immigration at the Labor Ministry, a full regulation governing the issue is still taking shape in Brazil. “Significant efforts have been made by all of the actors involved, with a view to regulate and adapt their systems. Of course, there are still issues to be addressed, but the law has made great progress towards acknowledging immigrants as individuals with rights.”
The new Migration Law, Quintas said, “is very beneficial when compared to the previous legislation, which was very much closed and protectionist, and saw the foreigner as a threat to national security.” Nonetheless, she went on to remark, there are still issues in bringing the new rule into practice.
“This new law comes with a welcoming spirit, bringing along with it rights and guarantees for foreigners and immigrants in Brazil. The law was passed in May [last year] and only became effective six months later. The big problem in the first year is that the decree regulating the law only really came out on the day the law was brought into effect, on November 21, when everybody started reading and understanding something that had already become effective. So the implementation took several months, and certain things haven’t even been implemented at all,” she said.
