FRIDAY, MAY 10, 2024
It certainly wasn’t the phenomenon of brain drain, wherein one can observe that a highly skilled workforce of a given region are prompted to migrate to another country or region so that their skills may be recognised in exchange for a higher degree of remuneration.
But rather this mass migration which the State of Goa has experienced has been due to the privilege afforded by the Portuguese Consulate General wherein Goans who wished to take up the Portuguese nationality could do so and thus by having obtained the Portuguese passport, their entry into the consolidated EU job market would be hastened and even guaranteed to a certain extent.
Moreover, with the UK having been a member state of the EU (European Union) till the December 31, 2020 the Portuguese passport holders could have directly accessed the UK for job opportunities, educational advancement and even for access to better healthcare whilst continuing to live in the UK on Portuguese Nationality, a privilege that Portuguese nationals could have enjoyed prior to BREXIT due to the bilateral treaty agreements between the UK and Portugal.
General consensus however has demonstrated that Goans would only take up the Portuguese passport route if they could end up being in the UK rather than the less preferred EU States like Portugal or France. The reasons for such a limited preference would primarily be due to the language barrier that has presented itself in the European framework and that every European country would prefer to propagate their own language and dialect despite being a member of the European Union. For instance, a Goan-origin Portuguese passport holder would have difficulty in learning Deutsche if he were to choose to migrate to Germany, while it would be easier to communicate in English in the UK since the English language has been widely spoken and used in Goa.
Of course, understanding the British accent is another task on its own but it would certainly be easier to adapt to in comparison to learning a new language altogether. This illustration would only represent a very limited aspect of the choices that a Goan-origin Portuguese passport holder would have faced in Europe.
The economic situation for the Portuguese passport holders is not so great back in Portugal as well since the Coronavirus pandemic has brought the Portuguese Government to declare a State of emergency, close it borders with the neighboring states of Spain and France and the medical facilities in Portugal have been experiencing an overwhelming number of Coronavirus infection related complications that has stretched the economic and administrative machinery of Portugal to the brink of a breaking point and if it were showing any signs of recovery from the great recession of 2008, all those green shoots of progress have now slowly begun to wilt away.
Therefore, the option of migrating to Portugal after having obtained a Portuguese passport shall not seem like the best economic decision at present since the job-market there is highly competitive and the number of lay-offs are at par with the percentage of unemployment in the State. This would indicate that there exists a large number of people willing to work and having been in active employment in the past, but now they just can’t be employed due to the fact that the economic situation deems their employment to be an unfeasible decision at the present time in the economy.
Hence, now the situation would seem rather unappealing in the absence of a lucrative future due to the lack of access that the UK wages and emoluments carried with it thus representing a decent earning capacity. Given that the people of the UK through a referendum voted to leave the EU and chose to curb Europe’s access to the UK market economy vide the EU’s single market framework, the economic future of scores of Portuguese nationals of Goan-origin has been left in a state of suspense since the detailed immigration policies have yet to be comprehensively interpreted in light of the proper legal precedent and ratio that international law traditionally imposes.
Thinking back in hindsight, just a half a decade ago it could be observed that Portuguese Nationality Consultancy Services were being set up all over the State with the aim of enabling Goans to smoothly transition from their current Indian Citizenship into the Portuguese citizenship and which was going to be recognised all over Europe since the UK was a part of the EU at the time. This Burgundy coloured Portuguese Passport was being touted as the Gateway to Europe and an easy access to the UK along with the accompaniment of the various benefits which had formed a part of the allure of the British Victorian Lifestyle. Now, the well-informed Goan would have to think harder and reason out a little more comprehensively before choosing to surrender his Indian citizenship in exchange for a Portuguese passport, given that the UK is no longer a part of the EU.
