This paper analyses the efforts of Salazar regime to "monopolize the legitimate means of people movement" (TORPEY, 2005) by showing that, during the Portuguese New State, the emigration control reached an apex on two circumstances in which the authorities had prohibited the boarding of some migrants who were ready to legally leave the country. The desperate letters written by some Portuguese families, who were forbidden to emigrate to São Paulo´s farms in 1938, and by those subjects prohibited to leave Portugal due to the 1947´s law demonstrate the materiality of boards made of decrees and ministerial dispatches signed by an authoritarian government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]