Don't Follow in Britain's Footsteps

A REBUTTAL TO CONSTANÇA URBANO DE SOUSA

This article was originally published in the Portuguese publication Público. It was translated from the English text below:

Last month I published articles in The Byline Times and The New European discussing how I managed to get Portuguese citizenship and what this means to me as a British Remainer. Not only has Ms Urbano de Sousa deliberately misquoted my words, but she has used the article to play on people’s prejudices towards migrants at a time when a health pandemic has increased xenophobia in Europe.

 

Ms Urbano de Sousa argues that the only reason I sought Portuguese citizenship was because I wanted an EU passport after Brexit. She misleadingly quotes from the article that prior to Brexit “I had never really identified as a Sephardic Jew”. Yet she has clearly overlooked the context of the article in that, in terms of nationality, pre-Brexit I felt English, British and European. I didn’t believe that my ancestry changed that definition in any way. Of course, I experienced my Jewish heritage, and the anti-Semitic abuse I received growing up in that Anglican school made my Jewishness feel all too real.

 

Having dug deeper into my ancestry I can satisfy Ms Urbano de Sousa’s request of a “current connection to Portugal” and “a genuine interest in being an integral part of the Portuguese People”. Upon being expelled from Egypt in the late 1950s my grandparents’ family was scattered across Europe. Even though my grandparents ended up in London, their relative Henri Tillo settled in Portugal in 1960.

 

Tillo’s desire to integrate was unrelenting and it wasn’t long before he built the foundations of Northern Portugal’s textile industry. He ended his career as president of Exponor, the Porto Industrial Association, as well as the General Assembly of the Jewish Community of Porto. and was even made a Comendador by President Mário Soares.

 

Fast forward 55 years and since 2015, tens of thousands of Sephardic Jews from all over the world and especially from Israel have applied for Portuguese nationality. The majority of these new citizens have not permanently moved to Portugal, but many families have laid down roots there. These communities have opened Jewish museums, kosher restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, new prayer rooms and have even produced Portuguese history films. Hundreds of millions of euros have been invested in the national economy. It’s safe to say that up until the pandemic, Portugal’s economy had seen a revival since the dire straights following the 2008 financial crash.

 

But more importantly, the spirit of the ‘Law of Return’ was never that of forced migration to Portugal. The “connection to Portugal” is specifically defined as a past connection, not a present one. It is a major change to the law to require a “current connection”, particularly as it dissuades people, especially non-EU citizens, from having the opportunity to contribute to Portuguese society in the first place.

 

As Leon Amiras of the Israel College of Lawyers has shown, Spain’s decision to introduce a nightmare of bureaucratic hurdles has made its version of this law a meaningless gesture. I can even speak Spanish and would learn Portuguese if I chose to build a life for myself in Portugal and “contribute to Portuguese society”. Unlike Britain, Portugal’s welcome to the peoples it had previously persecuted is admirable.

 

On 7 April our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was taken into intensive care having caught COVID-19. Upon his release five days later, he paid tribute to the Portuguese nurse, Luis Pitarma from near Porto, who stayed 48 hours by his bedside. Luis effectively saved Johnson’s life and was thanked by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, himself of Sephardic heritage. Luis made a life for himself in Britain due to the opportunity presented by his EU citizenship. I now have the chance to do the same in Portugal.

 

By pursuing Brexit, my Prime Minister has made Luis’ life harder by putting up barriers for him to live and work in the UK. He has even forced Luis to sign up to an EU settlement scheme to keep his job and was on the verge of passing legislation that would make Luis pay even more should he need medical assistance in Britain.

 

By pursuing Brexit, Boris Johnson has made the life of the nurse who saved his own life that much harder.

By pursuing Brexit, Boris Johnson has made the life of the nurse who saved his own life that much harder.

I urge Ms Urbano de Sousa not to stoop to Britain’s level of gleefully removing opportunities and citizens’ rights. Portugal should be proud that it offers sanctuary to the non-Lusophone descendants of victims during the darkest period in its history. The country offers the opportunity for Jews and their descendants to integrate into a society and have the same rights as everyone else, no questions asked. This includes the freedom to work, study, live and love in all 27 nations of the EU, which I personally had lost. Losing these freedoms matters to me in a way that is deeply entangled with my Sephardic Jewish heritage, more so than to Ms Urbano de Sousa who wants to remove them again.

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