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Article - Spain offers Sephardic Jews fast track to naturalisation

Pauline

Forums Admin
The Guardian (UK) - Spain offers Sephardic Jews fast track to naturalisation, February 2014
"Spain has announced new measures to speed up the naturalisation of Jews of Sephardic descent whose ancestors fled the Iberian peninsula five centuries ago when they were told to convert to Catholicism or go into exile."

One way to get to live in Europe for more than 90 days, is to claim citizenship of an EU country based on your family history. Steve and I were able to move to England because I am an Irish citizen, and he was able to claim citizenship by being married to me. I am Irish because Ireland considers you a citizen if your father was born in Ireland, and my father was. This gives us the right to live and work in any EU country. We have never lived in Ireland.

Ireland also allows you to claim based on your grandfather, but I think there is a residency requirement.

These laws change all the time, so if you have European parents or grandparents, check the embassy of their country. This new law in Spain allows people to claim based on families living there over 500 years ago!
 
Pauline, was it difficult to go though the process of attaining your status? I think I may check with Austria's law's, as both of my maternal grandparents were born in Vienna. Finding all the information and paperwork, now that everyone who might remember is gone, could get frustrating...but I love research.
 
It was not difficult. I did this all about 25 years ago when we lived in Vancouver. I contacted the Irish embassy and they gave me the forms. I needed original copies of my parents birth certificates and their marriage certificate and my birth certificate. My family had these, so I did not have to send away for them.

One possible problem with Austria, and I am not sure this is still true, is that they do not allow dual citizenship. If you are a citizen of Austria, you have to give up other citizenships. But check into this - my information on that may be out of date.

The US at one time did not allow dual citizenship, but they changed the law in the 80s I think, so now you can be a US citizen and also a citizen of other countries.
 

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