Portuguese people out there. ‘We are’ in 178 of the 193 UN member states
Portugal has a consular register of Portuguese in 178 of the 193 countries that are part of the United Nations, Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said today in Penafiel at the III Meeting of Investors of the Diaspora.
Speaking at the opening session of the event held until Saturday organized by the Tâmega e Sousa Intermunicipal Commission in the Oporto district, the minister also presented figures based on the latest estimates of 2017.
“If we use the consular register as a criterion … we have Portuguese residents in 178 countries around the world,” said the minister, who “considering that the member countries of the United Nations are 193, this means that in only 15 countries there is no consular register of the presence of Portuguese. ”
Continuing to talk about numbers, Santos Silva resorted to the “latest estimates, from 2017″, to admit that there will be “almost 2.3 million natives from Portugal who have resided in another country for more than a year.”
“This means between 21 and 22% of the Portuguese population, that is, between one-fifth and one-quarter of the population born in Portugal resides outside the country,” said the official, regarding accounting that, if considered “the number of Portuguese descendants that live abroad, it surpasses and many the five million people “.
He continued: “This means half of the Portuguese population and a third of the Portuguese nationals or people who can be at any moment … and gives a very important dimension to the Portuguese communities that live abroad and makes the relationship with these communities at the heart of any public policy. “
