Over the past year, Portuguese citizens have become more certain that immigrants are, in fact, contributing positively to the economy.

This comes even though the centre-right Democratic Alliance and the far-right party CHEGA have tightened new immigration, nationality and return laws, Portugal Decoded reports.

Good economic asset

According to the Presidential 2026 study, a survey coordinated by the Portuguese Electoral Behaviour Project at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, 65 percent of respondents say that immigrants are good for the economy.

Among those respondents, 14 percent said that immigration is harmful to Portugal’s economy.

That represents an increase of close to 7 percentage points compared with a similar study carried out after the 2025 legislative elections. In both surveys, the samples were larger than those used in regular opinion polls, making the findings more reliable.

Not taking jobs

Another finding shows that the share of respondents who do not feel that immigrants are taking jobs from Portuguese people rose to 52 percent, compared with 47 percent a couple of years ago.

With that said, a majority of respondents still insist that in a case of job scarcity, employers should give priority to hiring Portuguese citizens. Up from 62 percent last year, 73 percent of respondents now share this belief, despite the fact that Portugal currently remains at full employment.

The share of respondents who reject the notion that immigrants are depriving Portuguese citizens of valuable public services also showed a rise to 50 percent, 4 percentage points higher than in 2025.

Another highlight of the study is the majority of respondents, 47 percent, who reject the idea that Portugal would be stronger if immigration came to a halt, compared with the 28 percent who believe it would.

Most important political problem

The authors of the study asked respondents to give a single answer identifying what they considered “the most important political problem currently facing Portugal”.

Migration and border control ranks sixth on the list, with citizens replying that they were far more concerned about issues such as economy, corruption and health.

Economic concerns were spread across several response categories, but together they reached 16.8% of answers, making them the most pressing topic overall.

Such concerns were the cost of living, inflation, pensions and low wages. Spread across several response categories, economic concerns reached 16.8 percent of answers, making this the most urgent issue according to Portuguese people.

Second on the list of most important political problems was the topic of corruption, linked to words by respondents such as “dishonesty”, “jobs for the boys”, “favouritism” and “lies”. Third on the list were health problems, with health services and the SNS used by respondents as examples to identify the issue.