Michele was stateless until this Wednesday, a year and 14 days after his birth, a period in which his parents began trying to register him at a Portuguese consulate, without response, and in “desperate” contacts with services in Portugal, according to Lusa. .
The boy was born in Valença, Spain, on August 10 last year, and to a Portuguese father and an Italian mother, he had to be registered at a consulate.
Parents they wanted me to be portugueseso that later he can also have Spanish nationality, which would not happen if he were registered as Italian, due to the lack of agreements on this matter between Italy and Spain.
Shortly after the baby was born, they managed to schedule a trip to the consulate in Barcelona in October, where the father is registered, but the mother’s documents that they were asked to bring did not arrive on time: they were certificates that had to be requested in Italy and then be translated, in certified form, in accordance with the standards specified by the Portuguese authorities.
It was when they finally managed to gather all the documents that “the saga begins”, in the words of Michele’s father, António Martins, 42 years old and 17 in Spain, to Lusa. Because, even in October last year, when they were able to request a new visit to the consulate in Barcelona, this appointment could no longer be made by email, but only through the platform created by the Portuguese Government for appointments in all consulates.
Despite daily and constant attempts, between October and February/March of this year, António I never managed to make an appointment..
He also sent emails and ended up being contacted by phone by a person in Lisbon, who told him what documents were needed to register the child. At the beginning of May, he was given July 28 as the date to go to the consulate in Barcelona, with the warning that there were still “two to six months” until a response.
“Already desperate, we spoke with a Portuguese lawyer“Antonio Martins explained. For the parents, he said, the prospect of keeping a stateless child for so long was terrifying: the child had already fallen ill and received emergency treatment, which, however, they had to pay for, and since then he has not been entitled to assistance. public health care, such as visits to the pediatrician, reimbursed medications or vaccinations, which they always had to pay for.
The lawyer advised the parents to apply in Portugal, which they did, with the help of António Martins’s mother, who first tried to register the baby, but the services said that in this case she had to apply for nationality. before michelle
For this process, they could not schedule an appointment in the Lisbon region, where the mother of António Martins lives, who delivered the documentation to the Central Archives of Porto, in mid-June.
From now on, they were unable to obtain information on the progress of the processnot online, as it was supposed to, not by mail, not by phone.
A notary friend of the family had better luck and was told, by email, that nationality applications are all in the same queue and are answered in order of arrival. Even so, “urgent requests” can be made, which the notary did, via email, invoking the stateless status of the baby, but the response was that they did not find the process and, subsequently, silence.
On a trip to the Algarve by car, and with the help of employees from the Vila Real de Santo António Registry, who became aware of the case, the parents managed to locate the file and confirm, in early August, that it was not lost. , but nothing else.
It was on his return to Valencia that António Martins reported the case on TwitterLess than a week ago, and among so many messages “from so many people with the same complaint reasons”, with “years of unresolved processes”, he received one from a person who works at the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) , in Portugal, who explained that urgent requests for nationality “can only be made by registered letter”.
Hello @justica_pt My son was born in Spain 1 year and 8 days ago. The son of a Portuguese father and an Italian mother, he does not have the right to Spanish nationality. 1 year and 8 days and is stateless, he has lost the right to public health in Spain, to the vaccination program to be able to enroll in school
— P. Martins (@3lingua) August 18, 2022
That’s what António Martins did last Friday, when he sent that letter, which arrived at the Porto central archive on Tuesday, one day before his mother received a call to tell her that he had been granted Portuguese nationality to the grandson.
A year and 14 days after he was born, my son was no longer stateless and less than a week later he posted it on Twitter,” said António Martins, who does not know if this was due to the process that was already underway, the registered one. letter with the urgent request or the exposure that the Twitter post had in the media.
What he does know is that he has the feeling of having lived through a “desperate” process in which what shocked him the most was “the absolute disregard for users, nobody answers the phone, nobody gives information”.
Source: Observadora
