The Azores have always been a land of migrants. We came to these islands nearly six centuries ago, and for more than four hundred years we have been leaving their shores to create a Tenth Island across the Americas.
First, we journeyed to Brazil, from Maranhão to Rio Grande do Sul. And we reached as far as Uruguay.
Then we made our way to Bermuda and the United States of America, from New England to California. And we reached as far as Hawaii. Finally, we went to Canada, once again spanning an entire continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Today, in North America, the name of Portugal is written with one word: AZORES. We are 240,000 inhabitants living on the nine islands, yet we number in the millions when we include Azoreans and, above all, their descendants throughout our diaspora.
This is why the Azores can only be considered complete when we embrace their Tenth Island. The Azores begin in Santa Maria, stretch across the Americas, and reach their farthest shores in Hawaii.
For centuries, we were a quay of departure. In recent years, we have become a harbor of refuge.
The improvement in living conditions brought about by half a century of Political Autonomy has diminished the impetus for sustained emigration while attracting a growing number of immigrants who contribute to the development of our homeland—socially, economically, and culturally.
Socially, they help offset the effects of natural demographic decline. Economically, they help overcome shortages in the local labor force. Culturally, they enrich our society by contributing to its increasingly multicultural character. In other words, they come to the Azores to do precisely what Azoreans themselves have done in the countries to which they emigrated.
For this very reason, we who have always been a people of emigrants, welcomed and successfully integrated into the homelands of others, have a corresponding moral obligation to extend that same welcome and foster that same integration in our own homeland.
The report published by AIMA—the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum—in October 2025, presenting data for 2024, records a 30 percent increase in immigration to the Azores compared with the preceding year.
In recent years, these increases have become progressively more pronounced. In 2021, we had 4,480 immigrants. In 2022, their number rose by 14 percent, surpassing 5,000. In 2023, it increased by a further 22 percent, exceeding 6,000. And in 2024, another increase of 30 percent brought the total to more than 8,000 immigrants.
The Autonomous Region of the Azores now has 8,197 immigrant residents, representing approximately 3.5 percent of the Azorean population.
Even so, proportionally, we remain considerably below the figures recorded elsewhere in Portugal. In the Autonomous Region of Madeira, there are 18,944 immigrant residents, representing approximately 7.5 percent of the Madeiran population. Across Portugal as a whole, there are 1,543,697 immigrant residents, accounting for approximately 14.5 percent of the country’s population.
In the Azores, half of all immigrants are concentrated on the island of São Miguel. Nevertheless, the islands with the highest proportions of foreign residents are Faial, at 8.2 percent; Pico, at 7.7 percent; and Flores, at 6 percent.
On São Miguel, there are 4,050 registered immigrants—1,056 more than in the previous year—representing 3.2 percent of the island’s population.
The distribution by municipality for 2024 is not yet available, but the pattern observed in the preceding year is expected to persist, with Ponta Delgada accounting for approximately half of the island’s immigrant population.
In 2023, the distribution was as follows: Ponta Delgada, with 2,037 immigrants; Ribeira Grande, with 387; Lagoa, with 227; Vila Franca do Campo, with 138; Povoação, with 110; and Nordeste, with 95.
The approximately 8,000 immigrants registered in the Azores in 2024 originated from 100 different countries.
Reflecting the national trend, the largest immigrant community comes from Brazil, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the total. This is followed by immigrants from Germany, the United States, Spain, China, Cape Verde, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
More recent figures, already pertaining to 2025, indicate that 1,341 foreign students are enrolled in public schools, including, notably, 338 Brazilian students. They also record 197 foreign trainees enrolled in vocational schools, among whom 98 are from Cape Verde.
Yet behind every one of these figures stands a human being. People who come to enrich our society and contribute to its collective well-being. A society that aspires, ever more fully, to be welcoming, respectful, inclusive, and committed to recognizing, embracing, and valuing intercultural diversity.
José Andrade is the Regional Director for Communities, Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores
This text is based on an address delivered at the Conference on Development, Entrepreneurship, and Emigration, organized by the Portuguese Order of Economists on November 21, 2025, in Furnas, on the island of São Miguel.
Translated by Diniz Borges