More than half a million people are waiting to be granted Portuguese nationality and there are requests that were made 2 years ago and have not yet been completed. The government says high demand is straining resources.
Fábio Silva arrived in Portugal, from Brazil, in 2017, and has a one-year-old son who was born here and who has Portuguese nationality, but he and his wife are still waiting for the nationality to be granted.
“I came a year and a half ago and received correspondence that I was missing documents, so I came to bring additional documents for nationality”
The queue for Lisbon Central Registry Office it starts to form during the night and there are those who even come with chairs, prepared for the long wait, but always hoping to leave with the situation resolved.
“Today I arrived at 5 am, because if you don’t come early you won’t get service”, says Fábio Silva.
This Tuesday there were 60 service tickets, which are distributed every day, but ten minutes after opening the doors, more than half had already been distributed.
The attribution of citizenshipwhich is the subject that brings most people to the Institute of Registries and Notaries, It can be requested after 5 years of legal residence but the process takes a long time.
“I filed this 2 years ago and I believe the process is taking a long time, which is why I came to find out what the situation is,” said Napoleão.
“I came to apply for Portuguese nationality, it’s been 5 years of residence, so I already have to apply. My mother and father have already applied and are in the process, but it’s more or less 1 and a half to 2 years years of waiting”, says a girl who is also in line.
The Government justifies the delays with the number of orders but the union disagrees
To SIC, the Government justifies the delays with the number of requests.
“The high number of cases filed led to an overload of available resources, which had an impact on the processing of cases”, said the Ministry of Justice.
Despite this justification from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Union of Registry and Notary Workers says the problem is the lack of professionals.
“There is a shortage of 242 records keepers and 1691 records officers, this means a deficit of more than 34% of the staff that is needed.”
The union adds that there are more than 500,000 pending processes for attribution of nationality.
In addition to this competence, with the extinction of the SEF, the IRN also has the function of collecting documents for the renewal of residence permits, which is also overloading services and generating complaints from immigrants.
