Best of luck Mike, I'll keep everything crossed for you!

I am eager to share my process with everyone since this forum seems to be a great place to share information.

The most lengthy part of the process was the certificate of naturalization.

On 10/27/2008 I requested my great grandgather's certificate of naturalization to prove that this even took place subsequent to the birth of my grandfather

On 05/15/2009 I received the certificate of naturalization

I made my appointment with the NY consulate in October of 2008 and it was scheduled for September of 2009.

At this point in the process, I have dealt with the unbelievable ineptness of NYC in correcting a spelling error on my grandfather's birth certificate (he is deceased). In addition, there are open items that may or may not adversely affect the citizenship process, ie my grandfather was born Giovanni but changed his name to John...along with a few other minor spelling errors.

The NY Consultate told me that transalations are unnecessary, but it seems they may ultimately ask some documents to be translated.

I am waiting on Apostille's now and hopefully will have those completed over the next 30 days so that I can put my package together prior to my September appointment.

This has been a long and arduous process - but hopefully well worth it!

I am becoming more and more nervous about the actual "interview"(?), if it can be called that.

I am going back to review paper work with signore next Tuesday and i'll ask him how it will be for me.

I too have many spelling "errors", but so far he had said everything looks OK. I hope so since I have paid lots of money to get to the point I am at.

I began this whole process in January 2008, though I did not seriously contact the consulate until much later in the year.

Mike -

Is this signore person someone at the consulate?

I was barely able to get an email response back to my question. When I did, I was told that the documents would be reviewed at the time of my appointment. I undersand the NY consulate (the one where I have my appointment) is very busy, but one would think the process would be smoother if they would answer questions along the way!

JD

Mike,

Your information throughout this thread has been very useful in terms of setting expectations for getting through the process. My wife and I had been discussing living abroad and I had been researching work visas and things of that nature when I found out about jure sanguinis. That was all of two days ago, and we've sure learned a lot since then. She hasn't been able to talk to her grandparents for some of the specifics yet, but between ancestry.com, ellis island records, and footnote.com we've pieced together a lot of the puzzle.

We know her great grandparents had social security numbers at the time of their death, but were listed as aliens on the 1930 census. The date of naturalization is the biggest question at this point, since her grandfather was born in 1934 so we're hoping it wasn't prior to that.

It seems like everything has come together very easily, now it is time for the slow wheels of government to start in motion. I have contact information needed to request all US documents (Three birth certificates, one marriage certificate, and two death certificates from Pennsylvania, birth certificate from Michigan, birth certificate, marriage license, and divorce decree from California)

Once we confirm location of birth for her great grandparents we can send the Italian request off as well. I have my index search request in to UNCIS as of this morning, though they're currently serving requests from early May so I don't expect to hear anything back until December if I'm lucky.

Does anyone know what the process for citizenship would be for a US citizen married to an Italian citizen? My understanding is that you are eligible after six months of marriage if living in Italy, and three years if living outside of Italy. My wife and I haven't been married three years yet, so if she gets her Italian citizenship then we're going to have to wait to file mine, I assume with her being a citizen though we won't need a lot of the documents she's using for jure sanguinus.

We would like to move to Italy at some point if this all works, and we're probably looking at a 3-5 year window for that - meaning we have plenty of time to deal with all of this paperwork. Keep us updated on how things progress Mike, I'll definitely be checking back on the success of others, and hopefully make some good headway on my wife's claim as well.

Brief update (...well, after reading this...not so brief!):

Well, my dad has now officially applied!

It's only been 1.5 years since we first started gathering documentation, but at least we finally got him applied.

The "interview" for us was very simple:

We brought in all our original paperwork and sat with the same person we have been dealing with all along.

I still don't know this guys name either. Every time I ask he just says he is the only one here (in Boston) who does Citizenship stuff, so just ask for that office when I call.

Anyway, he is very nice but I think extremely overwhelmed with work...he often (politely) takes numerous calls during our meetings with him.

So he took all our paperwork and re-re-re-reviewed it, filled out something on the computer and gave my dad an "I want to apply for citizenship" paper to fill out and sign.

While we do have some discrepancies in the paperwork, the family tree is pretty obvious and given the slightest effort, you can tell who is related to whom.

He did ask my dad to verify orally a few facts in the paperwork, I think as a test to make sure dad was really who he said he was.

But he kept all the original doc's for my dad, grandpa and great grandpa (my Italian relative), so that is finally done.

Unfortunately it is August, which means Italy is basically on vacation now and nothing will happen until September.

I am still fighting with Texas regarding my own 1st marriage record, but I hope to get past that this week...again when the Houston Consulate gets back from August vacation!

A couple comments on this too:

When I first started thinking about this, I kept thinking that I'd be 1/2 American and 1/2 Italian...but really I'll be 100% American and 100% Italian.

Also, I am not really "applying" for Italian citizenship.

According to the law, I have a blood right to claim my citizenship. I don't have to pass a test. I don't have to prove that I'm "good enough" to be an Italian.

I simply have to prove I am my great grandfathers relative and claim my heritage.

Weird maybe, but just a new way to think about it.


Jelement: I really don't think anyone is going to bother you if your wife is a "real" italian.

However, to speed things up, for fun and for the honor of it, I plan to "re-marry" my wife in the same town/region/church that my great grandfather married his wife in 120 years ago in Italy.

THAT should prove that my wife is really my wife!

It takes a special kind of stupid to screw up this bad…repeatedly…several times.

The Italian Consulate in Houston wants a certified copy of my original marriage APPLICATION.

Not the license…not a verification letter…the original application. It contains a little more information than any of the other documents (for reasons beyond logic).

Simple enough really, but if George Bush is any example of the level of competence in government officials coming out of the Lone Star State, I should have known there would be problems.

Working with the Texas Department of Health and Human Services (who hold birth/death/marriage certs) I received at least 4 certified copies of my marriage license and 2 certified letters of marriage verification, and yet another certified letter stating that yes indeed, I was married in Texas and that they held the records I was looking for.

NONE of which were copies of my marriage application.

In a brief sentence in a short email, I caught something that had not come up in the 6 months of trial and effort to get this application: that the Texas HHS doesn’t have the application!!

So, I contacted the Dallas County Clerks office where this document was filed.

I spoke with Melinda and she was more than helpful in agreeing that they could provide me a certified copy of the application.

So, to settle this once and for all, I sent a letter to them (Attn: Melinda who would surely remember our conversation) explaining exactly what I needed, and that anything NOT the application was useless to me.

I even included a non-certified copy of the application so there would be no mistake as to what I was requesting.

And this is where the special kind of stupid comes into play.

They sent me yet another copy of my marriage licence. Again. Even after “reading” my letter and after holding in their moronic tiny little hands an actual copy of exactly what I needed from them.

They didn’t even have to go pull another copy, they could have just stamped/certified the document I sent them and returned it to me in the SASE I sent!!

So now I have 6 (or is it 8?) copies of a marriage license and NOT a certified copy of the application.

The amount of effort it has taken them to be this stupid is well beyond the effort it would have taken to do this right the first, second, third, fourth, fifth or even sixth time.

They have a sample copy, the file number, the application number, names and dates, a letter explaining what I need and what I don’t, a phone conversation between at least 3 different people in their office and myself, $8 per copy, SASE’s, and they STILL somehow managed to do the wrong thing. Again.

It just boggles the mind that these people manage to survive life, let alone maintain a paycheck.