The Supreme softens the integration requirement for nationality for migrant women without training

Specifically, the Supreme Court has accepted a recourse of a woman of Moroccan nationality, to whom the General Directorate of Registries and Notaries denied Spanish nationality by residence for “not being integrated into Spanish society” because the examiners interpreted that the answers to the questionnaire required then showed that the woman was unaware of the reality of the country, politics, culture and geography.

Now, the Supreme Court has found that had been residing in Spain for more than twenty years with her husband and her children, born in Spain and that the erroneous responses to the questionnaire should not be decisive due to the need to take into account, in addition, the lack of cultural training, coming from a country with a low cultural training context for women. women.

An outdated procedure

For Paco Solans, secretary of the association foreigners online and foreign lawyer, this sentence is a success but “it’s quite late”. The reasons are two. The first, that the procedure of a questionnaire interpreted by a specific worker to give or not nationality, is a method that is no longer in force, because “that interview with the person in charge of the Civil Registry gave rise to arbitrariness.” Therefore, the Law was amended and Now there are two exams, one for Spanish and the other for general culture..

“This sentence is positive because has been critical of the attitude taken by the person in charge of the civil registry, which considered that there was no integration making absolute omission to the difficulties that as a woman she has had in his country of origin and he still has it here”, says Solans.

The second reason is that now, “the procedure is much more objective”, therefore, “it is important that the Supreme has dictated this doctrine and has made this application with gender perspective. So much so that the Government and the Cervantes Institute (which is the one who issues the apt in the exams) should take note to facilitate exemption mechanisms of these exams to migrant and vulnerable women”, states the foreign lawyer.

“A gender perspective is necessary in the processes”

“We find cases of women who come from countries with great discrimination and are even illiterate. That is why we ask for an exemption provided for this reason in the exams, sometimes they deny us because the woman ‘is very young and can still learn,’” says Solans.

“That is where the doctrine has to influence, give a gender perspective to the processes, these women come with a backpack behind them that must be valued, without fear of falling into positive discrimination”. It is, in short, a sentence with a gender perspective “very interesting and should lead to reflection by the General Directorate of Registries and Notaries, which is in charge of the process.”