One of Portugal’s Jewish communities said it is seeing an increase in requests for naturalization by British Jews following the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union.
About 300 British Jews who are descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews requested Portuguese nationality from the Porto Jewish Community since the June 23 vote for a British exit, or Brexit, compared with just five in 2015, the community told the EFE news agency on July 18.
The city’s Jewish community, which has a few dozen members, is the smaller of two congregations certified by the government to vet requests for citizenship under a law passed in 2013 that offers nationality to descendants of Sephardic Jews. Officials say the law corrects the historical wrong visited on Portugal’s Jews in the 16th century when they were expelled or forcibly converted to Christianity.
The country’s larger and more established Jewish community of Lisbon, which has several hundred members, has not observed any increase in requests for citizenship by British nationals, according to Teresa Santos, the community official handling those requests. She said the community has received 1,090 requests, but very few from British nationals (although she acknowledged that some Israeli applications might have come from dual Israeli-British nationals).
Only a handful of applications have been approved since the law was ratified last year.
The report in EFE followed several others about British Jews who are seeking a second EU passport in order to remain EU citizens if the kingdom leaves the bloc. — jta