his article examines immigration in Portugal from a public administration perspective and asks to what extent the sustainability of social protection depends not only on demographic change, but also on the state’s capacity to integrate migrants in a timely, coordinated, and verifiable manner. The argument has two parts. First, immigration currently tends to strengthen, rather than weaken, the contributory base of Portuguese social security, given the high proportion of foreign residents of working age and their growing participation in the formal labour market. Second, this potential can be lost when public administration relies on fragmented procedures, burdensome interactions, limited interoperability, and insufficient operational capacity. The study combines a review of public administration scholarship on state capacity, coordination, digital governance, administrative burdens, and public value with a documentary analysis of Portuguese and European sources on migration, social security, and digital transformation. It develops an analytical framework in which administrative capacity, digital governance, and early formal integration are treated as mutually reinforcing conditions for translating human mobility into financial sustainability and social cohesion. From both a normative and an operational perspective, the relevant policy choice for Portugal is not a simplistic opposition between openness and restriction. It is the construction of a more integrated, digitally capable, responsive, measurable, and territorially coordinated public administration.

--

immigration,public administration,social protection,administrative capacity,digital governance.