Rita Matias: "Remigration? I have no doubt that the topic will have to be raised."

He says he doesn't regret revealing the names of immigrant children and accuses the left of unjustifiably hyping the case. He believes the controversy served to highlight a problem that many Portuguese people complain about.

The publication of a series of names, and in your case also surnames, of children studying in Portuguese schools has generated a lot of buzz. Given the impact this has had, would you do it again?

Given the impact this had, I would do it again in the same way, because for the first time I saw this topic on the agenda and truly discussed.

Even sacrificing the identity of children?

I believe the children's identities were not revealed because names are not identifying without other data and details. Even for data protection purposes, I didn't reveal their NIF (National Taxpayer Registry), the name of the school, or any photographs.

But are they still identifiable with the data you revealed?

With immense difficulty. There are more than 1,000 daycare centers with preschool openings; it seems very difficult for them to pinpoint the exact school, the exact child. And that wasn't even the objective of the intervention. The goal was simply to highlight that the criteria for distributing places are incorrect. We must prioritize working families, whether immigrants or not, otherwise we'll be penalizing and sacrificing the majority of women who are becoming unemployed to care for their children because they have nowhere to leave them.

But these children you identified, are you not sure if they are children of unemployed parents?

No, but the criteria for assigning vacancies prioritize a series of conditions, not only unfavorable economic conditions but also unemployment, arguing that people need time to look for work. This has been discussed several times here in the Assembly of the Republic, and in fact, I even recall much less controversial interventions. I remember one in July 2023, where I cited testimonies from Portuguese parents in these circumstances, and at the time, it didn't generate as much buzz, perhaps because the names I was mentioning were Portuguese, not foreign. So it seems to me that a disproportionate emphasis was placed here that isn't given to other topics, and that the emphasis that was placed ends up giving the topic much more visibility than if it had been just another video. The video had perfectly normal views, which is what I usually get on social media. From the moment the far left, through Livre and Congresswoman Isabel Moreira, began to focus on this issue and share it massively, it became much bigger. Therefore, those who apparently wanted to protect children ended up making the issue much bigger than it needed to be. And then I merely mentioned the topic of daycare places. I didn't engage in other conversations I could have had, namely about population replacement, about the Portuguese feeling increasingly like a minority in various parts of the country. I'm sorry that what has shocked me here isn't the lack of opportunities being offered to Portuguese families and Portuguese children, but rather this fetish that a certain elite has for protecting the seemingly most disadvantaged, and not the Portuguese who are suffering from the lack of public services and the lack of infrastructure capacity we have, which is evident and structural. This isn't the immigrants' responsibility; it's the responsibility of the policies adopted over the past few years. When we have more than a million people arriving in the country, they will naturally overload what is already not working.

But the truth is that for the people who are here and have children, one of the factors considered very important is precisely integrating children into schools so that there can be a good integration of these communities. Doesn't the fact that you emphasized this issue with that choice of names contradict that idea?

No, because not only did we not want to criticize the necessary and necessary integration, but I would never argue that access to education shouldn't be universal and should be limited to the Portuguese. At least with me, they don't expect that kind of rhetoric. It's a discourse that's increasingly emerging in Portuguese society, but also as a response to an extremism on the other side that has so trivialized a false inclusion that it generates outrage. And when people feel outrage, they don't always have the ability to express that outrage through the most democratic or peaceful means. And often, we end up seeing truly shocking behavior. But that wasn't the intention of the video; it was to give a voice to those who contact us daily. And if I showed you my phone, you'd see in the inboxes of all social media accounts testimonies from hundreds of mothers, hundreds of children who can't get places and then live the tragedy of having to put their children in a private school system, meaning that half their salary will be spent on these expenses.

What do you propose to solve this problem?

First of all, a proposal that's already being implemented in the Autonomous Region of the Azores, which generated a lot of buzz but then faded from the agenda, was to prioritize working parents. And then, naturally, public daycare networks need to be expanded. We can't have false ideas; if we don't have more infrastructure: daycare centers, hospitals, transportation, we really won't have the capacity to meet the population's needs. Changing the priorities in the Creche Feliz program so that single-parent and working families can have priority, rather than the current criteria of unemployment, or merely an economic situation where immigrants end up getting ahead and getting priority. This is what results in what we see on the lists, which are several foreign names and fewer Portuguese names.

Are these topics or measures that you will try to negotiate in the next State Budget?

Certainly. We will soon present a program to support motherhood and fatherhood with several proposals, some of which have already been presented, but which value the role of the family, which has unfortunately been devalued. In fact, we are perplexed to see the left once again talking about family when it comes to family reunification, or once again worrying about children's rights, after Rita Matias and André Ventura mentioned the names of foreign children. Over the past few years, atrocities and violations of children's most fundamental and elementary rights have been committed in schools, not only with citizenship subjects but also with the introduction of topics that are unnatural for child development and should not be addressed at that stage of development. This has never shocked the left or the far left.

Did you feel victorious?

No, not victorious. But I achieved my goal of seeing the issue discussed. I deeply regret that there is also political opportunism to take advantage of this to tarnish the image of André Ventura or Rita Matias. This, frankly, seems to me to be the spirit of much of this political and media bubble that fails to understand that this reported drama is a real one for all of us. Perhaps it doesn't translate into anything at all, because, as I said, we have private cars, we don't have to travel on overcrowded public transportation, we have access to private hospitals, we don't have to contact health centers. I've heard reports from doctors that show the use of the same tax ID number by immigrant mafias who always use the same number, and then, when the doctor is reviewing the patient's medical records, there is a young man in front of them with certain characteristics and medical exams that don't match the person in question.

And what do you advocate in the face of what is happening? Remigration?

The issue of remigration is not yet on the agenda in any way, from a legislative standpoint. But if we want to be intellectually honest, we must understand that it will have to be put on the agenda soon. I'm not saying Chega will do so, because I don't have a complete say on this matter. I'm just one of the vice-presidents of the parliamentary group and a member of the national board. Therefore, I believe there may be other positions, and I believe the party can manage its political time. But I have no doubt that my generation—I'm 26—will have to seriously consider this issue.