To deal with the explosion in requests for Portuguese nationality before the tightening of rules for granting descendants of Jews expelled in the Inquisition, lawyers have had to get up early in the queue at the responsible entity.
Last Thursday (4), the first in line at the Conservatória de Registros Centrais, in Lisbon, arrived at 4:10 am. Before 7 am, there were already 20 professionals —the number of passwords distributed during the morning — on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Each lawyer can file up to five nationality cases at a time. Therefore, with high demand, many have been facing long hours of waiting daily for more than a month. “Last week, at 6:15 am, the tenth person arrived. Today, at the same time, it was already the 16th, so we are having to arrive earlier every day. At the end of the month, we may have to sleep here”, jokes Raphaela Souza , which is in the routine of getting up early in the queue since the beginning of July.
As this is just one of the entity’s activities, some professionals can only be seen in the afternoon. “There is a time of day when the heat becomes unbearable, because the sidewalk has no shade”, says Diego Mayer, also a veteran in the routine.
The Portuguese Bar Association informed, in a note, that it has already received complaints about the situation and that it will file a complaint about the services.
Although requests for nationality can be made by sending the documentation by post, specialized professionals insist on going to the conservatory (a kind of registry office). “Those who deliver in person receive a receipt and a key right away to follow the progress of the process through the website; by mail, applicants have taken seven months to do so”, explains Mayer.
Several fear that cases may be lost in the face of the expressive increase in demand. A survey of the report based on the numbering of the processes indicates that there were at least 108 thousand requests between January and July. Announced by the government in March, the digital submission of nationality applications, which could also speed up the processes, is not working.
According to the Ministry of Justice on its website, “technical constraints on the communications network” led to the temporary suspension, but there is no deadline for the return of the service.
The general increase in requests for nationality — it has been more than a decade since there have been more new Portuguese people through this route than by births — has boosted processing time. For grandchildren of Portuguese, the current estimated period is 29 months.
Lawyer Ana Onofre draws attention to the insufficient number of employees in the registry offices. “It’s not for lack of money. Each order costs €250 [R$ 1.340], only here in this line are 20 lawyers with five cases each. Why don’t they hire more people?”
Dissatisfaction with working conditions and the lack of personnel exists among the employees of the Lisbon Central Registry Office, who announced a partial strike, on Mondays and Fridays, in August.
For lawyers heard by the report, the demonstration aims to pressure the government at a decisive moment before the change in the requirements for having a Portuguese passport. As of September 1, the country will apply tougher rules for granting nationality to descendants of Sephardic Jews, making access to the benefit unfeasible for most current applicants.
The main change is the requirement to prove contemporary links with Portugal, such as the inheritance of real estate and regular trips to the country throughout life. Until now, certification of ancestry by Israeli communities was the main requirement of the process.
Attribution of citizenship to this group was introduced into the law in 2015 and quickly gained popularity. By 2021, 56,685 people had obtained their Portuguese passport through the mechanism, including thousands of Brazilians. The restriction was decided after the repercussion of at least two investigations into the process involving Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, close to Vladimir Putin.
The rabbi responsible for certifying the billionaire’s Sephardic link was even arrested by the Judiciary Police. The Israeli Community of Porto, which issued the document, denied any wrongdoing.
