Same here and totally agree with you.

I've actually worked in Finance and spent 20 years abroad before coming back to Portugal and it was obvious already when I arrived 4 years ago, that government measures were rigging the housing market to be ever higher: Golden Visa in exchange for €500k "realestate investment", tax discounts for retirees from the rest of Europe to come live in Portugal, Digital Nomad visas, such a bullshit regulatory regime for AirBnB businesses that (eventually, after 10 years) the highest court finally ruled that unlike what the "regulation" said, you can't just convert appartments to AirBnB businesses as you feel like and have to follow the same rules as ALL OTHER BUSINESSES, and, last but not least, a complete total refusal to regulate speculative investment in Portuguese realestate by foreign investors (something as simple as a minimum 6-month residence in Portugal requirement similar to many other countries would've made a huge difference and still be compatible wth EU rules as it doesn't discriminate between portuguese and other EU citizens).

And this was just their Demand side manipulation.

On the Supply side, housing construction was down to 1/3 of what it was in the 80s and there is pretty much no public housing construction in the country of Europe with the lowest percentage of public housing.

Meanwhile we get loud "we've created 100 student accomodation rooms in this old government building we didn't use" announcements as if they're so amazing when the local unis take in 50 thousand students per year for what are typically 3 year courses so 100 new rooms once every 10 years or so is doesn't even touch the problem of student accomodation (itself a subset of the wider housing problem).

(Note that most top level politicians from the 2 parties that alternate in Government have declared income as "real-estate investor").

Portugal is were it is in housing because the Portuguese are mainly dumb and greedy votting for greedy, incompetent snake-oil salesmen.

That said, the "immigration problem" in Portugal has to do with how the country mainly takes in people with far less average levels of Education than the locals, and hence not capable of working in the kind of higher value added jobs as the locals (especially the young). This is why almost everybody working as Uber and food delivery drivers are from Brasil or the Indian Subcontinent - unlike most other countries in Europe, Portugal has very little in the way of selectivity in who can come (especially from Brasil, whose citizens are the largest immigrant community in Portugal) plus it can't really attract the more well educated as richer countries can, so you mainly get a whole different kind of brasilians in Portugal than you get in, for example, Britain were I also lived.

You can't really get your Economy to climb up the value added ladder (and hence pay higher salaries) if you're pushing the locals to have fewer children or, even worse, to leave the country as soon as they finish their degrees, by pumping up house prices to increase your personal rewards from the side-business that you have as "realestate investor" alongside your politician day-job, whilst "making up for it" by importing people with a way lower level of education than those children would end up having and those degree-holding young adults leaving because houses are too expensive already have.

He's just someone trying to provide a false narrative to justify his racism.

Portugal has massive house price inflation problems in the places were the jobs are: all it takes is to look at the house price to incomes ratio in Portugal now and compare it with the historical average (last I checked it was 5x its historical average).

Sure, there are actually empty villages in the deep inland countryside were the only work is "subsistence farming" or "forrestry", for the simple reason that even being a cashier at a supermarket pays better so nobody is going to move there to do that work.

Looking at housing as "all houses everywhere have the same utility value" to be able to come up with that "there is no housing problem in Portugal" bollocks is beyond ridiculous.

That said, blaming immigrants is pure, unadulterated far-right nutter fantasism: the idea that the people with the least power in the country (who can't even vote) are to blame for this is logic-defying, to say the least.

Imagine not addressing any of the points, and instead just accusing someone of being wilfully ignorant.

How ignorant

Just to be clear, you’re arguing that if capitalism didn’t exist in Europe, we would be building twice as many buildings per year? This is the dumbest take I’ve read today, and I accidentally landed on r/Politics this morning.

You are deliberately talking over them. They’re clearly not claiming that all migrants are illiterate or uneducated or ill-prepared for work in Europe. They’re arguing that many are, and those migrants exacerbate our problems. They certainly don’t solve them.

The large volume of applications of economic refugees made it so since 2015 the the education requirements are essentially waived. There are no wars in Morocco, for instance, but i personally know of refugees that hid their nationality to enter as war refugees. This is very common.

You're showing me an average with the entire population of Turkey and the Balcans. Look better at your data, please. Now consider where the majority of migrants are going and are being expected. It is not a genuine source of comparison. It's closer to 40%. Besides, like i also mentioned, it's not just higher education.

I'm not saying they can't be or shouldn't beintegrated. What I'm saying is that their existence will not affect the demographic crisis in any meaningful way. They won't have kids, just as the locals. I've seen it happen. If we're saving people, we're saving people, but let's not pretend it's because of the population crisis, because that is irrelevant to the problem

Have you noticed what governments all over Europe have done to Adult Education in the last couple of decades???!

Indeed, the genuine, strategically well thought, policy on immigration for all involved would be to bring people over, educate them and integrate them.

The thing is, the immigration policies we have are mainly to bring over people to exploit them to the max without investing in them at all - they're about growing the local underclass to lower the employment costs of food delivery apps, restauration, garbage collection and similar, not about shared prosperity for both the locals and those that were invited in and should have been treated as guests rather than thrown (along with their children: see the baundeliers in France) into a life of poverty because they're starting far below the locals in the opportunities ladder due to their lower formal education level and difficulties with local language.

Meanwhile you have muppets on the make-believe-Leftwing-Rightwing political theatre both approaching the whole subject of immigration in a highly reductionist way as some kind of Identity War, all the while the people with most of the money rub their hands in glee whilst they cash in on the misery of locals and guests alike.