Spain turns down law-of-return jews, suspecting fraud (NO! IMPOSSIBLE!)

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Spain is suddenly turning down many Jews who apply for citizenship. Why?
https://www.jta.org/2021/08/23/global/why-spains-jewish-citizenship-laws-acceptance-rate-has-plummeted
MADRID (JTA) — Bernardo Pulido spent over $29,000 on genealogical documentation, Jewish heritage certificates, attorney fees and trips to Spain to prove his Sephardic heritage.

But last month, like so many others attempting to gain Spanish citizenship through a 2015 law promising to right the wrongs of the Spanish Inquisition that expelled Jews, Pulido received a rejection letter from the Spanish government.

Pulido, a 61-year-old engineer from Caracas, Venezuela, drew a parallel between the decision and the Inquisition, which forced many of his ancestors to flee in 1492, fearing for their lives. For Venezuelans, a Spanish passport represents a way out of a country in the midst of a deep economic and humanitarian crisis. He plans on appealing the rejection.

"It hurts me a lot because we have complied with all the requirements and followed the law. Many lawyers have told me that how the law is being applied to us now is illegal," he said.

Newly published citizenship data from Spain's Justice Ministry reveals that just in the last quarter alone, 2,276 applications were turned down — compared to a total of three before this year.

Of the 150,000 total applications that have been submitted since 2015, 33,485 people have been granted citizenship to date. Only about 6,000 have been accepted in the past quarter. Applicants from Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico have been severely affected. 

The sudden shift, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has learned, is driven by a fear of fraud and is the product of what some experts say are retroactively implemented bureaucratic standards for applications. The Spanish government denies any changes in the application process.

To be eligible for a Spanish passport, applicants have to put forward evidence of medieval Sephardi ancestry through heritage certificates and family trees. They also have to demonstrate special links to Spain and Spanish language skills through tests.

An internal notice issued by Spain's General Directorate of Legal Safety and Public Trust indicates a change in the interpretation of the law took effect last October. Previously, government notaries were the first intermediary for applicants, sending applications along to government officials or directing applicants to gather more materials. Since October, government officials have stepped in, rejecting applications previously approved by the notaries and not providing applicants a chance to submit further documentation before issuing a rejection letter.

Additionally, Spain's Ministry of Justice had previously approved many applications with Sephardic heritage certificates from organizations such as the Union Sefaradi Mundial and the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. Today, the ministry is only accepting certificates issued by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, which ceased issuing them on July 31 so that they could get through a backlog of applications. (The federation is for the time still issuing certificates to Sephardim who have been living in Spain for at least two years and wish to apply for Spanish citizenship on the basis of residence — but that is something they have done since the 1990s.)

"The government was previously approving lots of cases with the very same certificates and documentation that are being denied now," said David Arevalillo de la Torre, a lawyer from Madrid who is currently handling hundreds of rejection cases.

The Spanish "Law of Return," as it is sometimes nicknamed, has also closed its new application window entirely for the near future. It will need parliamentary approval to be reopened.

In a statement to JTA, the ministry denied any change in the way the law is being interpreted but said that they are cracking down on suspected fraud perpetrated by some applicants. According to a recent article in El Pais daily, a police report sent to the ministry at the end of 2018 alerted it to the existence of a criminal organization behind alleged fraud.

"The grounds for denial may be varied and different in each case," the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain wrote in an email to JTA. "There is no common typology through which the files are denied. What we can assure is that, after six years of collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, the work carried out has been rigorous and professional at all times."

Sometimes the federation certificate is not enough, as in the case of Carlos Rizzo of Venezuela, whose mother and aunt, both senior citizens, both saw their federation-backed applications denied last month. Rizzo is one of a significant number of applicants now appealing rejections for themselves and for family members.

"I have no choice but to appeal until the very end. This is an injustice in every sense of the word," Rizzo said.

Applicants have one month to appeal after receiving a rejection letter. After that, the Spanish government has up to 90 days to give an official reply. But several attorneys involved in the process said that appeals often tend to go completely unanswered.

If their appeal is answered and rejected, applicants can sue the government as a last-ditch effort to gain citizenship. The appeal process leads to additional lawyer fees, since individuals cannot legally file the appeals by themselves.

"It is only after an administrative appeal that the applicant can go to litigation before the Supreme Court," Arevalillo de la Torre explained.

There is another option for those fleeing desperate situations: Portugal passed a similar bill in 2015, granting citizenship to Sephardic descendants. Data from last year shows that 23,000 people have obtained a Portuguese passport through the law.

But the Portuguese law is more restrictive because it requires applicants to prove ties with a specifically Portuguese Sephardic community. The smaller Jewish communities of Lisbon and Porto are the only organizations that can approve applications, which must show ties to one of them.

Officials in Washington and Spain have expressed outrage over the wave of Spanish rejections. U.S. House Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat from New Mexico, raised the issue with the White House and the State Department.

In Spain, two members of parliament, Valentina Martinez and Pablo Hispan of the conservative People's Party, have also asked the government for further explanation, the El Mundo daily reported. If the current trend continues, experts predict that tens of thousands of applications will be rejected in the coming quarter.

Pulido plans to sue the government if his appeal is neglected or overturned.

"In my family we are very disappointed by these decisions. Our intention is to return to Spain, and contribute with our skills and knowledge to their society," he said. "I do not understand how there is so much lack of appreciation on the part of the Spanish government."

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New Yorkers with Sephardic roots say Spain is breaking its promise of citizenship
https://www.jta.org/2021/10/14/ny/new-yorkers-with-sephardic-roots-say-spain-is-breaking-its-promise-of-citizenship

(JTA) — After Spain announced it would offer of citizenship to families of Jews it expelled more than 500 years ago, Mark Tafoya, a personal chef living in New York City, filled out an application.

Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tafoya calls himself a "proud Sephardic Jew rediscovering my roots." So from Inwood, in northern Manhattan, he tracked down all the required documents, created a genealogy chart and hired an attorney. He detailed his family's heritage from their departure to Spain and arrival in New Mexico some 500 years ago. He even bought a small stock in Santander Bank to prove a monetary link — what the application requirement defines as a "special connection" — to Spain. The Jewish Federation of New Mexico certified his application.

Tafoya had seemingly done everything right. But for the last 25 months, he has been waiting for an answer from Spain that hasn't come. He hasn't gotten any indication that he'll ever get an answer.

"The waiting is the hardest part," he said. "If I knew I was rejected, I could start the appeals process." Appeals can take four to five months.

Until this year, only one applicant for the Spanish citizenship program had been rejected. But in 2021, over 3,000 applications have already been denied, according to the American Sephardi Federation, and more than 20,000 have found themselves in an extended period of waiting — not just for citizenship, but for an explanation of what appear to be endless delays.

Tafoya was one of about 30 people who gathered in front of the Consulate General of Spain in New York on Monday to protest the denials and delays. Calling their protest "Yo Soy Parte" ("I am a part"), members of both Latino and Jewish communities to call out what they see as the injustice and hypocrisy of these rejections.

The protest was the result of a collaboration between American Sephardi Federation, a Jewish group, and The Philos Project, a New York-based nonprofit that helps Christian leaders, mostly evangelicals, "understand and engage with important Near East issues," according to its website.

The event emerged after Jason Guberman, executive director at the American Sephardi Federation, spoke to Hispanic leaders around New York about the issue at the invitation of Jesse Rojo, the head of Philos Latino who often collaborates with Guberman's group.

Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico, flew in for the event and spoke to the crowd in an expression of solidarity.

"I stand with you as somebody who has a deep connection to Spain, its history, and the Sephardim," Fernandez said. "Like many in Northern New Mexico, my ancestors include the Spanish, the indigenous, the Apache, the Pueblo, and yes, the displaced Sephardim."

A congressional letter that she initiated addressed to Spanish President Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón and would introduce on Oct. 12 was read aloud at the protest.

"We urge you to rescind these changes and ensure that every eligible Sephardic Jewish descendant can receive citizenship to their ancestral home under the law as the Cortes Generales intended," said the letter, signed by nine members of Congress, including New York Democrats Alan Lowenthal and Ritchie Torres.

Spain's Law of Return passed unanimously in the Cortes Generales, the Spanish legislature, in 2015. It allowed for any descendent of Sephardic heritage to apply for citizenship. Similar versions of the law existed throughout the 20th century, but the 2015 version said applicants need not be practicing Jews, and that they could apply for dual citizenship.

That opened the door for over 132,000 people who applied for citizenship under the program, claiming ancestry through family trees that included Sephardic Jews with roots in Spain and non-Jewish descendants of "crypto-Jews" whose ancestors were expelled or fled Iberia during the Inquisition. More than half of those people began their application in the last month before the Oct. 1, 2019 deadline.

But the 59,000 people who had submitted their materials well before before the October 2019 closing date should have gotten an answer by now. Of them, approximately 34,000 have been granted citizenship, and another 22,000 still await a response.

For the Sephardic descendants, it seemed as though Spain was genuine in its attempts to make reparations. "It was an amazing gesture," said Guberman, who has worked with many applicants to get their documents in order.

Which is why it feels like such a betrayal when applications are suddenly and inexplicably rejected, protestors said.

"It's an insult on top of an insult," said Tafoya, referring to Spain inviting its Sephardic descendants back in after acknowledging the horrific acts of the Inquisition, only to reject them once again.

"The broken promise of the noble gesture of reparation wounds more than if Spain had never made the offer of return in the first place," the congressional letter concludes.

It is unclear why there has been a sudden slew of rejections. The congressional letter cites complaints by applicants who were approved by Spanish judges, only to be rejected by the Ministry of Justice — a move that is illegal, according to the New York Times. Many applicants have been asked to provide more in-depth genealogy charts, and some face bureaucrats' insistence that the "special connection" donation to the Spanish economy must have been made before the law was announced in 2015. Others have seen certificates of Sephardic origin from Jewish institutions outside of Spain rejected.

The window to apply closed on Oct. 1, 2019, which makes it even more frustrating that the rules for approval changed after that deadline and applications were already in, protestors told The Jewish Week.

The Jewish Federation of New Mexico, located where a number of people claim Spanish Jewish ancestry, is one of only a few institutions in the United States that grants certificates of Spanish-Jewish origin to non-Jews. Many of those applicants have been denied.

The New Mexico federation helped certify 20,000 people from more than 50 countries across the globe, it said. A majority of the applicants came from Venezuela Colombia, and Mexico.

The wave of rejections is especially heartbreaking for Venezuelans who applied, Tafoya said. The law seemed to offer a safe, legal opportunity for them to leave their beleaguered country and become European Union citizens. Many had emptied their savings to afford the application process, which costs at least $7,000 to complete.

Some of the protestors speculated that the halt in approvals is due to sentiments of antisemitism in the new Spanish government, which is led by a left-wing party that came to power in November 2019. Others wondered if the ruling party, which was not responsible for the Law of Return, is wary of introducing new voters into the country who might support the previous, more conservative party that had accepted them.

The Consulate General of Spain in New York does not provide information on the status of pending applications, it told JTA by email.

"I believed the Spanish government when they said that they were sorry for the sins of the past," said Jason Gomez. a third-generation New Yorker who learned about Spain's citizenship program while it was under discussion. He subsequently interviewed his older Puerto Rican relatives about the strange customs of his childhood — eating only beef, not pork; placing rocks on graves and only marrying into certain families, all reminiscent of Jewish traditions.

Gomez discovered that his family is descended from a community known as Xuetas, Mallorcan Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity, but continued to practice their faith in secret.

"In 2015 the Spanish government said that they recognized the generations of suffering in this terrible history and wanted to make amends," he said in his speech. "But only six years later they have turned away from us."