On September 26, 2012, I officially became a citizen of The Italian Republic through the law of jure sanguinis, or right of blood. Italian law dictates that you can qualify for citizenship if you can trace your lineage back to, at most, a great-grandparent. In my case, I was able to qualify through my maternal grandparents, who arrived in the U.S. from Italy in 1961. This post will explain the process by which I was able to declare my citizenship. Let it be known, also, that I am speaking directly to my experience with the Italian government, more specifically the Boston office of the Italian Consulate General, and their laws that define eligibility for dual citizenship. If you are looking to claim citizenship from perhaps another European country or elsewhere in the world, you should consult the website of your local consulate or embassy in order to read about their eligibility criteria.

Before I continue with my story, it is important that I note this determining factor in the eligibility of citizenship: you must be able to prove that your relative who emigrated out of Italy was still an Italian citizen at the time of the birth of the relative of the next generation. This rule exists, because, prior to 1994, dual citizenship between the Italian Republic and any other nation was forbidden, so any Italian citizen who immigrated to a new country and assumed the citizenship of that nation was thus required to renounce their Italian citizenship. For example, my grandparents arrived in Boston in 1961, and my mother was born in 1963, the first of her siblings to be born in the U.S. At the time of my mother’s birth, my grandparents were still Italian citizens because they had not yet qualified for American naturalization. Therefore, my mother was born with rights to Italian citizenship because she was born to two Italian citizens, regardless of the fact that they were living elsewhere. Had my grandparents both obtained their American citizenship prior to the birth of my mother, she herself would be ineligible to qualify for citizenship, thus rendering myself and my sister ineligible as well. Had it been my great-grandparents who emigrated out of Italy, I would have had to prove that they were still Italian citizens at the birth of my grandparent. So, in your quest for citizenship, you must first determine that the lineage in your family has not been “broken,” so to speak. As I understand, this can be done by looking up American citizenship records online and comparing them to the date on the birth certificate of your first direct relative born outside of Italy (eg. parent or grandparent).

Once you have that set, you’re ready for the next step, which is gathering your documents. As I go through the process, I’ll keep referring back to my personal experience as an example, but please keep in mind that your process may be different based on your own circumstances. When I applied, I did so alongside my mother and sister, so the documents that I collected were as follows:

• My mother’s birth certificate – Newton, MA
• My birth certificate – Newton, MA
• My sister’s birth certificate – Newton, MA
• My Nonno’s (grandfather’s) birth certificate – San Donato Val di Comino, Italy
• My Nonna’s (grandmother’s) birth certificate – San Donato Val di Comino, Italy
• My grandparents’ marriage certificate – San Donato Val di Comino, Italy

The official copies of the birth certificates for myself, my mother, and sister were easily acquired by paying a quick visit to City Hall in Newton. Each copy cost $10, and came notarized by the clerk in the registry office.

The official copies of the documents from Italy took some more time to receive. However, I had two advantages when it came to obtaining these documents. The first advantage is that my grandparents come from a very small town in the mountains of central Italy, so their municipal hall isn’t exactly inundated with document requests. Secondly, the town registrar happens to be my mother’s cousin. One quick long-distance phone call later, and we had the documents on their way to us via priority mail.

Once you receive your documents from Italy, make sure you have them translated into English, if they aren’t already. You may be wondering why it is important to have these documents translated from Italian to English when, in the end, they will be reviewed by an officer at the Italian Consulate. The answer is that these documents must be notarized before they can be presented, and in order to have them notarized, they must be translated into English. In my case, all of the information on documents from Italy was written in both Italian and English, so that took care of this step. The last step in making these documents official is having them notarized, so I brought mine down to the bank and had them stamped and signed.

Now that your documents are deemed official, then they are ready to receive the Apostille Seal. In Massachusetts, this is done at the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, for a fee of $6 per document (at least that was the price in 2012). The Apostille Seal is given by placing a glossy paper on top of each document, tying it to the document with a ribbon, and then embedded with a giant wax seal. Once you have this done, your documents are now ready for the consulate.

You will need locate your nearest consulate and set up an appointment to meet with the officer who is in charge of citizenship registry. The Italian Consulate in Boston has an online scheduling tool, and therefore does not take appointment requests over the phone. A word of advice, the waiting period for an appointment could be months, so keep that in mind and schedule your appointment accordingly. Each consular office represents a particular jurisdiction, so it is important that you schedule your appointment with the correct office. I am very fortunate to live a mere ten miles away from the consular office in downtown Boston, so I was able to do all of the paperwork in person, rather than having to send anything in. I made two trips to the consulate – the first was to turn in all of the documents, and the second was to sign off on all the paperwork once the documents were processed by the consulate. I had some more family connections work again in my favor, as my great uncle, who knows the officer at the consulate that handles citizenship requests, was able to help facilitate my appointments and overall make the process pretty easy.

And that was it on my end! Once I turned in the documents and signed off on everything, they were on their way to Italy and the paperwork processing rested in the hands of the clerk in the town of San Donato Val di Comino. Again, that clerk is the very same cousin of my mother who sent us the documents of my grandparents in the beginning. She was incredibly instrumental in seeing that the documents were received and processed in a timely manner. I know it sounds like I’m bragging, but I really cannot recount the experience of this process without giving credit where credit is due, because I do not think that this would have gone nearly as smoothly as it did.

For time reference, the documents were sent over to Italy in June and the official citizenship letters arrived in October, as they were dated at the end of September. All in all, from the time I started collecting documents to the time that my certificate arrived was a period of five months. And that, my friends, is it.

Some more key points of info:

Total Cost: So, given that I did all of this back in 2012, the only fees I incurred were those associated with preparing the documents. That amount came to $80, between securing documents, notarizing, and getting the Apostille Seal. However, beginning in 2014, a consular service fee of $336 (300€) was established, so anyone who is now applying for citizenship will be subjected to this fee. An extra cost is that of the passport, which costs $145, plus the cost of having my photos taken. Keep in mind, if do you want a passport, make sure to NOT smile in your photos, or they will otherwise be rejected. Save yourself the unnecessarily expensive photo fee and remember to put on your best sourpuss. I eventually obtained my passport in 2017, so though it wasn’t a cost that I incurred during the actual application process, it is something that I paid for later on.

Advantages: There are two major advantages to having received my Italian citizenship. The first is the right to not only live and work in Italy, but anywhere else within the European Union. The second major advantage is being able to travel with an Italian passport. There is not a major difference in the caliber of the American and Italian passports, but visa laws are constantly changing, and having an Italian passport might mean that I could potentially save time and money on a visa application to a particular country. Additionally, beginning in 2021, travelers with American passports will be required to file for a visa waiver to enter the European Union for a period of up to 90 days, much like the ESTA requirement for EU passport holders when traveling to the U.S. Having an Italian passport, however, saves me from having to ever do that, and I get to skip some pretty lengthy immigration lines at the airports thanks to automated passport control! If you’re interested in how traveling with these two passports works, check out my post here!

Linguistic Requirements: Unlike the process of naturalization, which requires that you have a decent grasp of the national language of the country from which you are seeking citizenship, citizenship by bloodline does not require that you have any knowledge of the Italian language, history, governmental laws. Of course, that’s not to say that brushing up on your Italian studies wouldn’t be to your benefit, but you can rest assured that the Italian government will not be expecting you to pass an exam of any kind.

Taxes: As far as I know, from having been a working adult, I have not had to pay any taxes to the Italian government. If this was a concern that was holding you back, then fear not. I cannot guarantee that things may change, but at least for now, general income taxes have not been an issue.

If you think you may have an eligibility claim for Italian citizenship and have more specifics questions about the process, I am happy to answer what I can. If you have ancestry ties to another country in the European Union, I would definitely consider looking into what the citizenship requirements are for that particular country. Obtaining dual citizenship might be easier than you think!