MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentines seek emigration to Europe

Argentina's historic condition as a melting pot of immigrants from all over Europe is providing hundreds of thousands of children and grandchildren of those pioneers with the hope of escaping their nation's economic nosedive and returning across the Atlantic

Some 500,000 Argentines whose ancestors were born in 10 countries set to join the European Union in 2004 want to acquire a E.U. passport, according to a report published Monday by the daily La Nacion.

The quest for new, mostly Eastern European documents comes on the heels of a rush by many thousands of Argentines seeking Spanish or Italian passports in recent years. The newspaper said that, over the past few weeks, embassies and consulates had received a flood of requests from descendants of Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Slovenians, Cypriots and Maltese.

The requests began coming in on Dec. 13, when the European Council agreed to incorporate 10 countries of eastern and southern Europe into the European Union beginning May 2004, the daily added.

Argentina is suffering the worst economic and social crisis in its history, causing many citizens to go abroad in search of opportunity.

The Polish embassy in Buenos Aires is no longer providing direct assistance to the public to prevent some 200 people from sleeping outside the entrance to the building every night.

All interviews with Polish consular officials must now be arranged in advance. "We receive more than 300 direct enquiries at the embassy and attempts to arrange interviews over the phone or by e-mail are going on non-stop. This type of (activity) was very sporadic one year ago," Czech Vice Consul in Buenos Aires Daniela Plockova said.

The workload at the Lithuanian embassy has also increased, as some 150 to 200 citizenship applications are being processed each month and between four and five requests are received each day.

"The number of interviews has tripled and everything has been made worse by the Argentine crisis. We have found that the Lithuanian community is larger than we thought, some 30,000 people," Lithuania's consul in Buenos Aires Aligmatas Rastauskas said.

According to the report, these descendants generally cannot speak the language of their ancestors and do not generally observe their traditions.

Most do not intend to move to their ancestral homeland, but rather seek the passport in order to obtain permission to reside in the more prosperous countries of Western Europe, the report added.

"Estonians have sprung up like mushrooms. We had 130 people registered, but now we've got 200 at least. They are no longer interested in Estonia; they want the European passport," Estonian Consul in Buenos Aires Peet Pullisaar said.

Diplomatic officials said, however, that it was not easy to obtain a passport from one of these 10 nations and that citizenship laws varied depending on the country.

"It's much easier to arrange (for permission) to work and legally reside there, but thus far no one has been interested in that possibility. Those who come in want to enter the European Union," Slovak Consul in Buenos Aires Miriam Cenjelova said.