Five centuries after the Portuguese seafarer Vasco da Gama crossed the Arabian Sea and explored this land of coconut palms and creamy sand beaches, young Indians are embarking on reverse migrations. Taking advantage of history, they are obtaining Portuguese passports, transforming themselves into card-carrying Europeans.

"Sure, I'll go to Lisbon — I have eight cousins there," said Stuart Michael Fernandes, a 24-year-old boat mechanic, who stood in a rundown hallway by an iron gate used to control passport applicants at the Portuguese Consulate General here. "But then, I will go straight to London."

His friend, Glaston Luis, 20, an engineering student at Goa University, said he, too, would stay only briefly with cousins in Lisbon before going "to Scotland or London."

Under Portuguese law, all inhabitants of "Portuguese India" — Goa and the northern coastal enclaves of Damão and Díu — were considered Portuguese citizens. In the months after Indian troops ended colonialism here, in December 1961, thousands of Goans left for Portugal or its African colonies.

A decade ago, as the European Union was shifting to visa-free travel among member nations, Portugal opened a consulate here. Suddenly Goans realized that anyone living here in 1961 — and their children and grandchildren — could get a Portuguese passport.

"People see Portuguese passports as a means to employment in all of Europe," said Alírio da Costa, the manager of a travel agency here.

In a newspaper on his desk, classified advertisements offered the services of "experts in Portuguese passport submission to Lisbon."

"It's a business, as if Portuguese citizenship is for sale," Miguel de Calheiros Velozo, Portugal's consul here, grumbled in an interview. "It is a way to go around immigration laws. This morning, the consulate was full of people who had nothing to do with Portugal."

Goa, India's smallest state, is but a microcosm of a national mania for emigration. Today, about 20 million Indians live overseas.

The process is slow, though, and with hundreds of passport applications backing up here and reports of Portuguese passports falling into criminal hands, on March 1 Mr. Velozo stopped accepting applications for 90 days.

The issue blew up last fall when two cases involving high-profile fugitives who held Portuguese passports came to light. Neither man had ties to Goa. The Indian and Portuguese-era archives are poorly maintained and their staffs vulnerable to bribes, Portuguese officials here say.

Consular officials have a hard time telling who is who even in face-to-face interviews, and many people who lived here before 1961 did not have Portuguese names. Furthermore, many passport requests are made directly to Lisbon. As many as half of the requests come from people outside of Goa, even outside of India, according to Eduardo Faleiro, a Goan member of Parliament.

In March, Narana Coissoro, a Portuguese of Goan origin who is deputy speaker of the Portuguese Parliament, visited here and promised to expand the local consular staff to tighten checks against fraud. But no ships bearing aid are on the horizon.

"Goa is seen from a distance, and listened to too late," João Nunes de Cunha, governor of Goa, once complained bitterly in a letter to Lisbon. The letter was written in 1668.