The government of Portugal launched this Tuesday (1), a new platform that plans to speed up the processing of Portuguese nationality processes for Brazilians and other foreigners.
The new version used by the Institute of Records and Notaries (IRN) will digitize the operations associated with nationality processes, from the entry of the application and the respective documents, analysis and final decision.
Initially, the tool comes into force at the Central Records Conservatory, in Lisbon, and at the Porto Central Archive, and should reach the so-called 16 Nationality branches on November 4th of this year.
With automation, the customer service employee will only have to validate the information uploaded, an estimated time saving of 1h13 in a process that could take 1h50.
In the area of nationality, receiving paper documentation is the main source of inefficiencies, adding bureaucratic burden, logistics and the risk of fraud to the process, according to the Portuguese institute.
The new functionalities involve the following steps: scanning the documents presented by the applicant upon entering the application; extract the applicant’s identification data using artificial intelligence; automatically insert into the system; Automatically classify the process according to the type of request.
In the opinion of the Secretary of State for Justice, Maria José Barros, the bureaucracy in receiving requests and the multiple manual and redundant tasks cause ‘bottlenecks’ in responding to nationality requests. “We hope this new technology will help reduce backlogs, because the worst thing about receiving one is having to wait a long time for it,” she said.
“From now on, all types of requests will be processed on the new platform, where interactions with applicants and agents are carried out electronically, guaranteeing security and transparency”, stated Filomena Rosa, president of IRN.
The new platform is integrated with the civil registration system, allowing birth registration to be automatically registered with the order granting nationality. In this way, it is estimated that the capacity of services to process nationality processes will be increased by 50%. “The new nationality platform also allows representatives and applicants to monitor the stages of the process online, with greater transparency and clarity”, adds the Portuguese institute.
In 2022, the IRN received 230 thousand applications for Portuguese nationality. There is no information available about the year 2023 or the number of orders this year.
Among the situations in which national law allows foreign citizens to obtain Portuguese nationality are: length of legal residence in Portugal; nationality of family members; existing relationship with the Portuguese community.
Difficulty regularizing documents
In July, Brazilians and other foreigners living in Portugal reported difficulties regularizing their situation in the European country, even though they met the requirements to stay legally. The problem, according to them and lawyers who deal with this documentation, is the delay for the Agency for Migration and Asylum Integration (Aima) in processing requests and the difficulty in getting an appointment to request or renew a visa with the government body.
This content was originally published on New platform should facilitate Portuguese nationality for Brazilians on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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