A program installed by the IRN is unable to identify a series of information from citizens who are applying for Portuguese nationality. Lawyers who follow cases say that clients are being harmed.
Just over two months ago, the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) made a big fuss about the change in the system through which applications for Portuguese citizenship made by descendants of Portuguese citizens and by foreigners who have lived in the country for more than five years are processed. The promise was that, with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the processes, which have been taking more than three years to be resolved, would move more quickly. There was a sigh of relief for the more than 420,000 citizens who are on the waiting list. Many believed that technology would work in their favor.Well, documents obtained by PÚBLICO Brasil indicate that the new IRN system is full of holes. The Artificial Intelligence, responsible for evaluating the information digitally entered by lawyers and solicitors on the citizenship platform, in addition to not delivering what is expected of it, is suppressing relevant data from applicants for Portuguese nationality. Worse, in some cases, it is swapping the genders of citizens. In one of them, the Brazilian Fernando is registered as being female.“We have observed many flaws in the IRN system since the changes were made,” says lawyer Alfredo Roque, from VE Consultoria. “We are seeing everything, people classified as having a different sex, citizens without their parents’ names, and incorrect numbers on very important documents,” he says.
Not only that. “We did the math and found that one third of the processes we are involved in have flaws in the IRN system. If the situation continues like this, many people will be harmed, especially because it is almost impossible to rectify any data after citizenship has been issued,” adds Roque. When contacted, the IRN did not respond to the questions posed by PÚBLICO Brasil.For the lawyer, it is not possible that such a delicate issue is being treated with such disregard. “The government has an obligation to know what is happening at the IRN. It was promised that, with our system, the time to resolve cases would be shorter, that people would be served more quickly, but what we see is one failure after another,” he highlights.Under the previous system, all documentation submitted by people seeking Portuguese nationality was assessed by an IRN server, which then digitized everything and the process could be monitored online. Now, lawyers and solicitors are the ones who enter the information into the platform for analysis by the AI. The IRN's employees only enter the process at a second stage.
Server humorComplaints about the IRN extend to the different understanding that the department's employees have regarding the legislation. According to Ema Oliveira, Head of Operations at Start! Be Global, it is common for an employee of the Institute to provide information on a certain topic and, later on, for another employee to say that the information was not correct.“This different understanding ends up making work and resolving pending issues difficult,” Ema emphasizes. The confusion is so great that processes considered to be priorities, such as requests from minor children of Portuguese citizens, which should be resolved in a maximum of six months, are taking a year.For Fábio Knauer, CEO of the consultancy Aliança Portuguesa, there are problems on all sides at the IRN. “Now, they are giving deadlines of only 30 days for any pending issues in the processes to be resolved. How can they give such a short deadline if they take two or even three years to respond to citizenship requests? It is not fair”, he says.He points out that some requested documents take up to 90 days to be ready, many of which have to come from Brazil, for example. “We have been demanding more time to respond to IRN’s questions, but there are employees at the agency who are adamant about the 30-day deadline,” says Knauer.CEO of Start! Be Global, Flávio Peron believes that, regardless of all the problems presented by the new IRN system, it is necessary to give it a vote of confidence. “I tend to believe that, over time, the distortions will be corrected”, he emphasizes.According to lawyer Renato Martins, from the Martins Castro consultancy, the government should constantly support the agencies that work with migration and citizenship. “Portuguese legislation is very good, however, it will only work fully if there is adequate infrastructure,” he points out.Portugal had been systematically facilitating access to Portuguese nationality. In 2015, a change in the Organic Law reduced the time required to reside in the country to obtain citizenship: from six to five years. In 2020, there was another change in the Organic Law, this time reducing the obstacles to granting citizenship to descendants of Portuguese people, such as grandchildren. They no longer needed to prove emotional ties to Portugal and gained the right to grant nationality to two generations ahead. With these facilities, applications for Portuguese citizenship soared, with the majority of them coming from Brazilians.