Timelines (Setting Realistic Expectations)
TO DO LIST:
✅ Spend Time Researching the Process
✅ Set Realistic Goals & Expectations
❎ Be Patient
✅ Try Harder to Be Patient
Darling, if ever there was a process that required boat-loads of patience, and I truly mean a saint-like volume of patience, it is the process of obtaining dual citizenship.
So you’ve decided to pursue Italian citizenship as an American? Yay! Molto bene! Splendido! Now it’s time to establish realistic expectations regarding what this process entails and how much time it is going to take.
Obviously I can only speak to my own personal experiences here, but I find that it is easy to romanticize any and all things Italiano. É la dolce vita, miei amici! Right? Not to burst the limone flavored bubble but I feel it is my duty to let you in on a little secret….do you want to know what’s not romantic about Italy? THE BUREAUCRACY. This very much so extends to the Italian Consulates in the United States, so don’t succumb to the illusion that you can find a work around here. You can’t. From the moment you commit to this undertaking you will be up to your ears in bureaucracy like the rest of us. It will be bureaucracy as far as your pretty little eyes can see. My sage wisdom for you is this: just accept it for what it is and adjust your expectations accordingly. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
The cold hard truth here is that the number of americans seeking dual-citizenship skyrocketed at the end of 2016. For the sake of my blog, I will remain neutral on my political opinions regarding * that * situation…but, we all know the causation there. Italy, who were already dealing with immigration issues, dealt with the initial influx by tightening up their requirements for their Jure Matrimonii citizenship (citizenship through marriage). As of 2018, it is now required that all JM applicants be able to pass a B1 Italian language test. This helped deter some of the less serious applicants. Then came covid. Between 2020 and 2022 rates of Americans seeking dual-citizenship quadrupled. The already high numbers of US citizens who either wanted out completely, or wanted the freedom to travel that an EU passport provides, went through the roof. Consulates in the US were overwhelmed, and the apostille offices, the translators, the service providers, the dual-citizenship lawyers, etc.. all found themselves in a situation where demand exceeded the capacity of the system. That is the situation that we are all still in. At seemingly every stage of this process you will be dealing with offices and consulates who have months or years of back logs that they are trying desperately to work through. For example, the USCIS Geneology Progams used to have an average search response time of 90 days. They now average well over 13 months. Back in August 2022 when I had emailed them inquiring about our requests’ status I was told via their reply that they were currently handling requests from August 2021. They explained that they have experienced a 75% increase in annual requests since 2018 and that they are a team of 7 employees who now find themselves managing over 13,000 requests per year. They are not outliers, I received similar responses from many of the county and state offices that I dealt with in the last year. Honestly, I feel for them. It’s not their fault. I guess we all just need to be more patient until both governments adapt and adjust to accommodate the demand. Which, realistically, may never happen. Let’s all be for real, for real there.
A few “good to know” tid bits regarding paperwork, so that you can plan accordingly; Federal apostilles are now taking between 10-13 weeks, most translators are asking for at least a month for translations because of demand, C.O.N.E forms take ~a month, USCIS record requests take over a year, state apostilles can be anywhere from 2 weeks to 5 weeks depending on your state, Italian birth certificates take several months plus international shipping time.
As with any change in the stat quo, you find that people learn to adapt and adjust. As such, the advice from those who’ve been through the process to those starting the process and who wish to apply in the united states is now to make an appointment with your consulate as soon as you know that you are eligible (the exception to this is if you are applying at the LA consulate, where I just heard they are booking just a few months out). It used to be that you were advised to wait until all of your archetypal waterfowl were in a row before you even thought about requesting an appointment. These days, just trying to get an appointment with a consulate puts you at risk of high blood-pressure. Consulates are booking out years in advance (again, LA is currently an exception), and that’s for those lucky enough to snatch up a highly coveted appointment on their calendar when consulates do appointment drops. Each consulate, has its own process of releasing appointments; some open their books every third monday of the month, some open a waitlist as they work through their appointments and then reach out to those on the waitlist as slots become available, some open calendars at midnight (Central European Standard Time) on a certain day of the week, and some require a sacrificial offering of a juvenile unicorn under a full moon. I may have taken some creative liberties in recounting that last one, but the point stands, getting an appointment with an Italian consulate in the United states is hard and once you finally get one it is sure to be years away. Which leads me back to making an appointment as soon as you know you are eligible: If you plan well and take all of the different processing times into account you should have plenty of time to take care of your document collection and have it done according to your consulates standards before you need to show up at your appointment and submit your file. * Clears throat *- remember my advice about a good spreadsheet? this is why.
Once you submit your application, and barring the dreaded assignment of “homework” (read: adjustments or amendments of your documents or requests for additional supporting documents), you then have to wait to be recognized. Legally, consulates have two years to issue your formal recognition of citizenship. A lot of times you will hear back within those two years. Recently though, it is becoming more and more common for recognition to take longer. In situations like that it is within your right to issue a diffida, which is essentially a legal warning, or injunction. You basically serve warning to the consulate. This is not something you do casually but if you have not been recognized in the two years following your appointment it is a move that many suggest you make. This tends to light the fire and get you your recognition.
When all is said and done, applying in the United States is realistically going to take years. 3 or 4 if you’re lucky, 5 or 6 if you’re not. Be ready for that, and be as smart as you can in regards to how you schedule your paperwork so as to shorten your time until recognition as much as possible. It is true that you can significantly shorten the process by applying in Italy. That is the route that we have decided is best for our family, and I will delve into that in my next post.
Ciao!
