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Local seminar in Bucharest, with participation of a representative of the National Authority for Citizenship
Alexandra Mănăilă - Reporter
2 April 2015
On 31 March 2015 the Association for the Protection of Rights and Social Integration (Asociaţia pentru Apărarea Drepturilor şi Integrare Socială - ADIS) Bucharest organized another local seminar from the series proposed by the project ”Migrant in Intercultural Romania”, developed by the Intercultural Institute in Timişoara in a partnership with ADIS, the Centre for Civic Resources in Constanţa and the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Cluj, with funding from the European integration fund. Representatives of third country nationals' communities, cultural mediators, a representative of a public authority and the civil society participated in the event.
Participants took advantage of the presence of the National Authority for Citizenship representative to raise a number of issues related to the file content and the citizenship examination. The aspects raised by cultural mediators included: the impossibility to dispute the oral interview given for obtaining Romanian citizenship, the difficulty level of the questions, the requirement to submit a proof of revenues for the last 3 years, the impossibility of persons with a form of international protection to submit documents such as the passport. The proposal made to ANC, on which the alien communities' representatives insisted, was to prepare and post on the website a manual with types of questions from the previous practice of the Citizenship Commission. At present applicants have to respond to a set of 12 questions, with the answers indicating whether the alien knows or not the provisions of Romania's constitution, geography, history and general information. The decisions of the Citizenship Commission may be disputed in court.
Other serious issues from the point of view of the alien community representatives are related to medical services, considering that the legislation on the provision of such services to aliens is not known in all hospitals in the country.
The Arab community - best represented at the seminar - requested, as a solution to the aliens' lack of information, that the services provided by all NGOs dealing with aliens should be centralised and accessible for cultural mediators and migrant organisations.
Participants took advantage of the presence of the National Authority for Citizenship representative to raise a number of issues related to the file content and the citizenship examination. The aspects raised by cultural mediators included: the impossibility to dispute the oral interview given for obtaining Romanian citizenship, the difficulty level of the questions, the requirement to submit a proof of revenues for the last 3 years, the impossibility of persons with a form of international protection to submit documents such as the passport. The proposal made to ANC, on which the alien communities' representatives insisted, was to prepare and post on the website a manual with types of questions from the previous practice of the Citizenship Commission. At present applicants have to respond to a set of 12 questions, with the answers indicating whether the alien knows or not the provisions of Romania's constitution, geography, history and general information. The decisions of the Citizenship Commission may be disputed in court.
Other serious issues from the point of view of the alien community representatives are related to medical services, considering that the legislation on the provision of such services to aliens is not known in all hospitals in the country.
The Arab community - best represented at the seminar - requested, as a solution to the aliens' lack of information, that the services provided by all NGOs dealing with aliens should be centralised and accessible for cultural mediators and migrant organisations.
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