willemmarx

Immigration policies vary between countries, but in the historical context the offer of citizenship that Portugal made to people who had been forced out of their country on religious grounds was pretty unprecedented. Essentially along the lines of: "something awful happened to your ancestors (they were tortured, burned at the stake, their property confiscated, children forcibly given away for adoption), and we'd like to try and make it up to you, their descendants." Anti-semitism is still a scourge in many parts of the world, and played a role in this story I reported too, as political forces in Poland used the Abramovich application to help end legislation that had sought to right that historic wrong.

Hi there. I'm not sure I agree with you there. The Rabbi was not the only individual who was approving certifications, as my story makes clear, and the requirements that Mr. Abramovich met, on their own, were in keeping with a methodology that the Jewish community in Porto had been following consistently for many years, without any formal complaints, nor credible evidence (or even a credible suggestion that I have seen, at least) that there was ever some sort of quid pro quo involving wealthy donors and certification. The criteria were created by the Portuguese legislature, and the Porto community was given latitute to interpret them as they saw fit, and in a way that they never sought to hide from Portugal's authorities.

Thanks for the kind words. The fallout has been substantial - many international organizations have been unwilling to work with the Porto jewish community since the start of the investigation. Many individual members of the community have been named and shamed in some quarters of the Portuguese media, with a lot of insinuation but no credible evidence of wrongdoing, often based on anonymous sources, in particular from law enforcement entities. The Sephardic nationality law was first tightened, in the aftermath of Mr. Abramovich's citizenship being made public, and legislators have recently - as you allude to - decided to try and curtail the offer of Portuguese nationality to those of Sephardic Portuguese descent at the end of this calendar year. Nobody is under any illusion that this curtailment is not directly correlated to Mr. Abramovich's citizenship and the consternation and embarrassment that has caused for the authorities in Portugal.

It's hard to put a precise number on it in Portugal (and I can't speak for Spain), but in Porto the Jewish community has gone from a few dozen to around a 1,000 people, with the vast majority of those having arrived in the past decade or so. So it would be accurate to say that hundreds, if not low thousands.

I do not think I'm qualified to add much analysis in any answer to this question I'm afraid. What I would say is that modern Portugal is neither right-leaning, in terms of its politics, nor authoritarian - while it is a relatively conservative and still quite religious country in some ways, it is is progressive in others, and the relatively tiny number of Russian citizens to have been certified as Sephardic (300 in seven years, according to the Jewish community in Porto) is unlikely to have any major demographic or political impact.