Article in International Herald Tribune of 09th June 2003. VASCO DA GAMA, India On the highway to the international airport here, a travel agency uses billboards to hawk one of Goa's most popular products: Portuguese passports.
Five centuries after the Portuguese seafarer Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa, crossed the Arabian Sea and explored this land of coconut palms and creamy sand beaches, young Indians are embarking on reverse migrations. Taking advantage of history, they are obtaining Portuguese passports, transforming themselves into card-carrying Europeans. "Sure, I'll go to Lisbon - I have eight cousins there," said Stuart Michael Fernandes, a 24-year-old boat mechanic, who stood in a hallway by an iron gate used to control passport applicants at the Portuguese Consulate General. "But then, I will go straight to London." His friend, Glaston Luis, 20, an engineering student at Goa University, said he, too, would stay only briefly in Lisbon before going to Scotland or London. Under Portuguese law, all inhabitants of Portuguese India - Goa and the northern coastal enclaves of Damao and Diu - were considered Portuguese citizens. In the months after Indian troops ended colonialism here in December 1961, thousands of Goa's residents left for Portugal or its African colonies. A decade ago, as the European Union was shifting to visa-free travel among member nations, Portugal opened a consulate here. Suddenly people in Goa realized that anyone living here in 1961, as well as their children and grandchildren, could get a Portuguese passport. "People see Portuguese passports as a means to employment in all of Europe," said Alirio da Costa, the manager of a travel agency here. Grumbled Miguel de Calheiros Velozo, Portugal's consul here: "It's a business, as if Portuguese citizenship is for sale. It is a way to go around immigration laws." Goa, India's smallest state, is a microcosm of a national mania for emigration. Today, about 20 million Indians live overseas. The process is slow, though, and with hundreds of passport applications backing up here and reports of Portuguese passports falling into criminal hands, on March 1 Velozo stopped accepting applications for 90 days. The Indian and Portuguese-era archives are poorly maintained and their staffs are vulnerable to bribes, Portuguese officials here say. Consular officials have a hard time telling who is who even in face-to-face interviews, and many people who lived here before 1961 did not have Portuguese names. Furthermore, many passport requests are made directly to Lisbon. As many as half of the requests come from people outside Goa and even outside India, Eduardo Faleiro, a Parliament member from Goa, said this year. "We hear Punjabis waiting in the queue, speaking Hindi," Fernandes, the passport applicant, said, referring to a national language rarely spoken here. "It is very unfair." In March, Narana Coissoro, a Portuguese with origins in Goa who is deputy speaker of the Portuguese Parliament, visited here and promised to expand the local consular staff to tighten checks against fraud. But no ships bearing aid are on the horizon. "Goa is seen from a distance, and listened to too late," Joao Nunes de Cunha, governor of Goa, once complained bitterly in a letter to Lisbon. The letter was written in 1668. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
