Portugal’s ruling Socialist Party has proposed stopping the granting of citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews and has accused the Jewish community of transforming the citizenship application process “into a business” involving lawyers and genealogists.

The Jewish communities of Lisbon and Porto, which vet all applications, have condemned the proposed changes and rejected the accusation. “Applicants for Portuguese citizenship need the support of lawyers to help them through the process and unsurprisingly a number of companies in Israel provide this service. The Socialist MP Ms Constança Urbano de Sousa refers to ‘aggressive  advertising’, which does sometimes occur but is the exception rather than the rule,” Michael Rothwell, a board member of the Jewish community of Porto, told the JC. 

“We constantly monitor this situation and suspend our services to companies that offend in this regard.”

On Monday, the Socialist Party submitted a draft amendment to a 2013 law, which grants passports to those who can prove that they are descended from Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition in the 15th century.

The amendment proposes to limit naturalisation to those who have stayed legally in Portugal for at least two years. The change limits the ability of non-EU applicants to benefit from the law.

“There has been a rise in applications by children and spouses, especially of Israelis and Turks, who had already obtained Portuguese citizenship with nearly all of them neither living in Portugal nor having any ties to it,” the draft reads.

“The law has been a great success. It has brought Portugal together with the Sephardic world. So requiring that applicants must now have two years of residency is effectively killing the law,” said Rothwell. 

In order to apply for citizenship, applicants need to provide family trees, wedding contracts (ketubot), notarised documents, photos of gravestones or old travel documents, all of which must be translated into Portuguese.

About 50,000 have applied so far with 10,000 applications approved.

“The spirit of the law was never that of forced migration. A connection to Portugal – it was said – was a past connection, not the present one. It is a major change to the law to require a current connection. However, a current connection can be achieved not through compulsory residence but rather through the practice of charitable, cultural, economic, sporting or similar activities to benefit Portuguese people,” explained Rothwell.

“I don’t believe that this amendment represents the general feeling of the Socialist Party but we can’t be relaxed until it’s actually quashed.”

Prominent government figures, including the former party leader, Maria Belem, are preparing a written objection to the proposal.

If approved, the change would come into force in January 2022.