The Portuguese Parliament has approved an important change in granting citizenship that will benefit thousands of Brazilians.
In the fifth, within the package that amended the Citizenship Law for the tenth time, Article 15 was included, which amends the rule of the five-year period for the resident to submit the application.
The change was confirmed for the Portuguese Giro by rapporteur MP Alexandra Leitao of the Socialist Party (PS).
Under current legislation, a candidate must reside legally for five years in Portugal to be entitled to apply for citizenship.
The problem, which many parliamentarians consider unfair, is that the length of stay is only counted from the time the residence permit was issued.
Due to a backlog of applications, shifting immigration agencies and delays in analysis processes, thousands of Brazilians are waiting two years or more to obtain the official document.
The waiting time is ignored, when Brazilians only have a temporary residence permit, known as an expression of interest.
There are currently at least 150,000 applications for a residence permit on the waiting list, most of them from Brazilians who applied for a residence permit years ago.
With the change, which will remain subject to regulation, issued by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and published in the Official Gazette, “lost years” will be included in the calculation.
For example: If a Brazilian expresses his desire to reside in Portugal today, but obtains a residence permit within two years, this waiting time will count toward the required five years of residence.
In the end, the candidate in the example above would only need three additional years of residency, because the account would no longer be reset, not five years, as happens now.
The change was a battle led by the Brazilian Sonia Gomez, a hairdresser, and Juliette Cristino, a daily worker, as revealed by the Portuguese Giroud.
Subsequently, Cristino created the Committee of Portuguese Immigrants (CIP) and organized demonstrations, participated in a parliamentary hearing and created online petitions.
-Sense of duty fulfilled. This battle has been a demand since 2021, and it was not resolved in the meeting with the Ministry of Interior. So, I created a petition, which had four thousand signatures, but it ended up being invalid because people didn't provide their identity documents. I created another one and they summoned me to Parliament. I went there to say what people are experiencing and ask for change because of the injustice. It was the residents who won. My voice says what I went through and what thousands of people have gone through – Cristino told the blog.
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