Emigration helps Portugal out of crisis

The debate over whether highly skilled workers should seek work abroad continues in Portugal. At the end of last year Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho sparked a wave of outrage with his suggestion that unemployed teachers and professors could seek work in Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola and Brazil. But experience working abroad is a worthy goal in itself, writes the journalist Vitor Rainho in the weekly Sol: "During the 1960s our country had to deal with massive emigration. Portugal was a backward country and unqualified workers had no alternative but to look for work abroad. It was only in the mid-1980s that they started to come home again, when the government promised them special conditions if they returned. ... Today much is being made of the prime minister's alleged recommendation that members of certain professions emigrate. ... But it seems to me entirely straightforward that one solution to the crisis involves gaining work experience abroad. ... There is a future both for those who leave and for those who return home."

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