New consul of Portugal in Providence seeks to optimize services, boost academic exchange

PROVIDENCE - Portugal’s new consul in Providence Eduardo Ramos says his main priorities are to hire another staff member, acquire an additional mobile kiosk to facilitate Citizen Card and Passport issuances, and remodel the Vice-Consulate’s facilities.

“Ideally, there would be one more employee,” said Eduardo Ramos, who assumed his new duties in October. “Until July, there was one more person, who was on a six-month renewable contract, but she decided to leave.”

Currently, the Vice-Consulate is staffed by two technical assistants in addition to the consul.

“Three people is very precarious,” Ramos explained. “Two do customer service, but if one needs to go to the bank or goes on vacation, there’s only one. I can help with some things that deal with more complicated legal or Civil Registry issues, or even just handing out a passport, but I can’t do other things like making passports and citizen cards because we only have one machine.”

Before arriving in Providence, Eduardo Ramos had been Portugal’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York since 2021.

A Law graduate, he has been a career diplomat for 32 years. He has worked on Portugal’s mission to the United Nations in New York on several occasions and at the embassies of Portugal in Tokyo and Berlin, as well as in various positions at the Directorate-General for Foreign Policy at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Lisbon, among others.

He served as chief of staff to the former Secretary of State for the Portuguese Communities José Cesário, but only held that position for a short time because the government collapsed a few months after his appointment because former Prime Minister Durão Barroso resigned to become president of the European Commission.

Ramos said his focus now is optimizing services at the Vice-Consulate.

“I’ve only been here a short time and I haven’t made any big decisions, nor have I started with any big ideas, because first I want to have a couple of months of experience so that I’m not doing things based on theory,” he said.

Even so, he already changed business hours, and the Vice-Consulate opens half an hour earlier every day.

“I changed the business hours from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. because there would be a lot of people outside, when I arrived in the morning,” he explained. “I found that most patrons come here as early as possible so then they can go to work. Now, the morning queue is usually cleared by 10 a.m. It’s been going well.”

Contrary to what happens at the other area’s consular posts, there are no online appointments only walk-ins.

“It’s more worthwhile for people to come and be seen on a first-come, first-served basis, even if that means they have to wait half an hour to an hour to be seen. It’s better to do that than to be doing something that theoretically seems very nice, but then leads to a level of failure. People have to wait for weeks [for an online appointment] and sometimes they forget, or they change their minds, and the no-show rate can sometimes reach 30 or 40 percent. People end up not showing up and don’t bother to free up their slot.”

He said the Vice-Consulate performs around 7,000 consular acts every year - around 60% of which are related to acquiring Portuguese nationality.

“It’s a relatively recent phenomenon, not just here in Providence, but throughout the consular network in America. It has a little to do with the change in the image of the Portuguese community and Portugal over the years,” he said.

This greater demand has led to delays in the process of applying for nationality, he said.

“Whereas three or four years ago, nationality was acquired in two months, now it’s taking a year and a half,” he said.

In addition to optimizing consular services, the new consul is also committed to promoting academic initiatives and capitalizing on the fact there is a Center for Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University and an Institute for Portuguese and Lusophone World Studies at Rhode Island College.

“I wanted to see if I could boost the academic side... have more academic and scientific exchange between academic institutions in Providence and in Portugal,” said Ramos, giving as examples the fields of tropical medicine, architecture, and e-government.

“Our e-government is one of the best in the world,” he stressed. “We could exchange experiences and that’s what I’d like to develop.”

He already had the opportunity to visit several Portuguese-American organizations in Rhode Island and meeting with some local officials, including the mayors of Providence and East Providence.

In his courtesy call to Mayor Brett Smiley, he touched upon future avenues of cooperation between Portugal and Providence, from academia to e-government.

During his visit with Mayor Robert da Silva, he discussed the situation of the Portuguese community in East Providence, which is home to the largest Portuguese community in the state of Rhode Island (almost 25%), as well as the prospects for establishing direct air links between Rhode Island and the Azores.

All in all, Ramos said his adaptation to this area couldn’t be going better.

“People in the community have been very friendly,” he said. “My wife and I are loving Providence. Our quality of life is great; I’m a 10-minute walk away [from the Vice-Consulate] and our weekends are as full or fuller than they were in New York, given the cultural and tourist offerings and the beauty of this area. In terms of quality of life, it’s been one of the happiest phases, and I hope to be here as long as possible.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: New consul of Portugal in Providence sets out priorities for his mission