The new Portuguese immigrants

The news report that is on the television in the bar next door shows Silvio Berlusconi's face, to illustrating a story about Italy's runaway debt. Meanwhile, the lineup in front of the Consulate General of Angola in Lisbon stretches and shrinks at a constant rate.

The news coming out of the screen is bad: Italy is sinking, while France and Germany appear to be secretly negotiating a two-speed Europe where Portugal will surely play in the second division. Standing in line are two young missionaries, construction company employees and several executives, including one assertive type wearing a fedora and an anti-crisis kind of smile.

His name is António Fernandes, he is 36, speaks several languages, and has recently traveled to 50 different countries. He is now on his way to head up the Luanda base of his company, Cummins Power Generation, a multinational specializing in energy equipment. Fernandes will hire a team of around 40 people, including several Portuguese workers. With his exquisite Spanish, impeccable English and good manners, he is the prototype of the educated, intelligent, brave and ambitious young men and women who are leaving behind a country increasingly mired in its own negative data and collective depression.

"I suppose I'll be back in 15 years, when I've gained more experience," he says. "Right now, Portugal only gives you small opportunities."

Angola, a former Portuguese colony with enormous oil reserves that power a growth rate that is close to 10 percent, badly needs engineers, lawyers, economists and Portuguese-speaking teachers. As such, this country has turned into an El Dorado of sorts for qualified Portuguese nationals who cannot get a break in Europe.

"When I run into them abroad, I immediately recognize Portuguese workers for what they're worth," explains Fernandes: "We're hard workers, we're good with languages, honest, quiet and non-confrontational: we're ideal for any businessman." Then, in a tone halfway between ironic and bitter, he adds: "Right now, all things considered, our country's main and most profitable activity is just that: the export of people."

The president of the Portuguese business association AIP-CCI, José Eduardo Marcelino Carvalho, estimates that 10 percent of the active population is emigrating. All of these people are young and highly qualified. Many choose Angola, where there is already a resident Portuguese population of over 130,000, and most settle down in the capital, Luanda.

The bad news keeps pouring out of the television set on this grey and rainy morning: the European Union thinks that Portugal's GDP will fall three percent in 2012, deputies at the Assembly are arguing over a tough budget that will make all sorts of cuts and which, according to many, will not even be enough to contain the financial bleeding.

Meanwhile, Isabel Ferreira, a 34-year-old economist, is getting the last piece of paper she needs to go join her husband, a 30-year-old engineer who's been in Luanda for a year now. She has never been there herself, and has no idea whether she will like it or how long they will stay away from Lisbon. But she does know one thing: "Life here is tough. I make 600 euros a month and they give you three times that over there. Portugal has gotten small..."

Manuel Ennes Ferreira, an economics professor at the Technical University of Lisbon, is not surprised. "They are a new generation, one that is open to the world and cannot find opportunities here," he explains. There is money in Angola, there is funding, and everything's still waiting to be done."

Yet Ferreira does not think that this necessarily means that Portugal will be getting poorer. "It's true that they are leaving. But they'll be back as soon as there are opportunities here once more. This is not the generation of immigrants from the 1950s and 1960s, who left for Frankfurt or Paris to be waiters or workmen, and who only returned many years later for their retirement."

There are 7,000 Portuguese companies based in Angola, which will soon become the fourth-largest recipient of Portuguese exports. But Luanda is no paradise. Gold-fever cities never are. On the contrary, it is a strange, expensive, dangerous city that's being propelled forward by oil-fueled growth yet remains surrounded by misery. The vast majority of the local population does not benefit in any way, shape or form from the wealth that comes spurting out of the ground.

António Fernandes, who has already been there before, knows all about it. "Some people get there and feel depressed within a week because they cannot stand the streets full of trash, the fear of going out at night, the three-hour traffic jams and the institutional corruption," he explains. "It's certainly no country for babes in arms."

That may be so. But sometimes people are simply left with no choice. As he stands just one step away from the window where a consulate employee will see his case, Carlos Macedo, 35, quickly explains his own gold-prospector plans: "I'm a salesman, but I've been unemployed for months, and I have clients there who've advised me to go," he says. "I'm off on an adventure. I don't know what I will find there. I'm going by myself — but maybe later I'll bring my family over."