A British MP has criticised Portuguese legislation that has allowed thousands of Indians to settle in the UK.
Portuguese laws allow anyone born in Goa, Daman and Diu in India before 1961, as well as their children and grandchildren, full rights to Portuguese nationality and thus a ticket north to settle anywhere in the European Union.
In an article on the Daily Mail website, the Eurosceptic Conservative MP Philip Hollobone says that this is an “outrageous hole in the law."
Goa, Daman and Diu were Portuguese colonies in India until reoccupied in December 1961.
"This is an outrageous hole in the law and it should be closed. This is another case of the issuance of passports by one European Union country to people who have no intention of going to that country, but have rights go to Britain," Hollobone thundered.
"If we abandon the EU we could introduce border controls that would prevent these people from entering," read the Daily Mail article which reported that tens of thousands of Indians already have settled in the United Kingdom by becoming citizens of Portugal, although they had never been in that country.
At least 20,000 have "avoided the more stringent checks for people from outside the EU after obtaining a Portuguese passport in India, which gives them full right to live and work in the UK.”
The Mail refers to the British statistics indicating that in June 2014 there were 13,000 Indians with Portuguese passports living in the UK, and that in June 2015 there already were 20,000, "an increase of 7,000 - more than 50% in a year."
More than half the Goans with Portuguese passports are living in Swindon. The former market town had only about 25 Goans living there in 2000, but now has more than 10,000, said one of the town’s Goan leaders.
The newspaper cited a study released last year by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University that "showed how Portugal became a major gateway to the UK for tens of thousands of immigrants born outside the EU."
"The study showed that in the first quarter of 2015, some 54,000 immigrants born outside the EU were living in the UK with Portuguese passports," adding that, of 54,000, 20,000 were Indians from Goa and the rest were from other former Portuguese colonies, such as Brazil, Angola and Cape Verde.”
In August 2015, the then ambassador of Portugal in India, Jorge Roza de Oliveira, said that 90 applications are granted for citizenship each month, "the majority of those born of pre-1961 descendants, at least a thousand a year."
