Hi people, and thanks for welcoming me - it is me, Ana, just that Mudcat wouldn't let me be Ana, so I had to use my second name to register.
As for the immigrants that are coming to Portugal... how can I put it? Individually, most people are doing their best to make them feel at home (helping with the language, that is a difficult one to learn, and so on). But on a society level, things are not so nice. Our mostly right wing government is "warning" about how dangerous immigrants are and making rather difficult for them to obtain a legal situation, or to send for their families.
Of course that, since most of immigrants are ilegal, they are victims of organized groups, both in their own countries and in Portugal, and are sometimes terribly exploited. But we also have some organizations who protect immigrants and help them to survive the mountains of paperwork and redtape they have to go through.
Anyway, people are strange, you know? I've heard people I know saying things like: " I have some russians as neighbours, and they are quite nice. I'm helping their kids with the language and schoolwork. Poor people, they aren't even legal yet, it's an injustice the way they are treated at work!" and ten minutes later the same person says: "Most immigrants are drug dealers, you know? Dangerous people, the whole lot, our government should send them all back to where they came from!"