Document Collection (Part 2 - YSK: The Documentation Process)

Fontana del Pantheon in Piazza Della Rotonda

To Do List:

✅ Figure out which Italian consulate has jurisdiction over your place of residence

✅ Research the documentation requirements for that specific consulate

✅ Order CERTIFIED COPIES of all of your required documents

“If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy; God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.” - I’m assuming that whomever this quote is credited to had experienced the debilitating red tape that goes along with Italian citizenship. (I kid…sort of.)

Here are some important things that you should know about the documents that you collect for dual-citizenship.

#1. All of your documents need to be either certified copies or originals! This is very important. No consulate or comune will accept scans, print outs, or non-certified copies of documentation. Full stop. There are no exceptions to this. I will discuss how and where to order documents later.

#2. While you can use original documents (as I mentioned in #1) I do not recommend it! In my humble opinion, original documents should be treated as family heirlooms. That means keeping them with your family! Which leads me to number #3…

#3. YOU DO NOT GET YOUR DOCUMENTS BACK! The documents that you collect and submit to the consulate or comune will become part of your permanent file. They do not get returned to you. If you know that you want a set of your documents for your own personal family records then I highly suggest ordering multiple copies. Even if you do not care about having a duplicate set of records for the sake of posterity I still recommend ordering back up copies. While it would be an absolutely nightmare, it is, unfortunately, not unheard of for documents to get lost or damaged in the mail. Think of having duplicate copies as having an insurance policy. No one wants to lose a document that takes a year to get and not have a back up. That would be an enormous bummer.

#4. Unless you are applying at the same consulate through the same ancestral line, you can’t share documents with other people. If your cousin, sister, uncle, brother, or any other relative, wants to apply for citizenship as well - but they do not fall under the jurisdiction of your consulate then they will need to order their own copies of the documents and have them processed according the particular requirements of their own consulate.

#5. There is no magic list of documents that you will need to get that fits every persons case. Each consulate and comune has their own requirements regarding the documentation that an applicant needs to produce. On top of that, there are so many variables in an individuals ancestral circumstances that could effect what documents will be required of them. Even different people applying at the same consulate can have different required documents that they need to produce. There is also a difference between required documentation in the United States versus in Italy (more on this later).

DOCUMENTATION.

Buckle up, kids. This is about to get content heavy:

Why don’t you go ahead and enjoy some pretty Italian scenery from our last trip before I overload you with information.

For the sake of manufacturing an opportunity to learn, why don’t we have a Daniel Tiger moment (can you tell I have toddlers?) and initially pretend that you are applying in the United States at an Italian consulate. Lets talk first about how to figure out which consulate you fall under based on your place of residency. Here is a link that lists out all of the Italian consulates in the United States . Underneath each consulate there is a list of the states that that consulate holds jurisdictions over. Find your state to find your consulate. Once you know your consulate you can then research what they require for documentation. In case I haven’t made this exceedingly clear, I will spell this out so there is no confusion: You can only apply at the consulate that has jurisdiction for your residency, you can not pick and choose which you want to go to out of convenience. Hai capito? Rad. Moving on.

Next documentation topic up to bat is “where do I order documents from?”. This pertains to everyone regardless of where they are planning to apply, and this is where your research on a genealogy site is going to come into play. Lets start with your L.I.R.A; again, for the sake of simplicity, let talk about the bare minimum that will be required for documentation. You will need naturalization documentation. You can circle back to my last post about that. Additionally, you want to identify who issued their vital documents (birth and death) as well as their marriage documents, and if applicable, divorce documents.

For birth certificates you are going to want to first identify which comune (FYI, a comune is comparable to a municipality) in Italy they were born in. Once you have that information you can reach out to that comune to request certified copies of their Italian Birth Certificates by submitting a Certificato Di Nascita (heres a helpful link). You can do this by snail mail, email, or even by finding that comunes facebook page and sending them a message there (sounds odd, but I have heard of people having success this way when other methods don’t work). If you are fluent in Italian, specifically the dialect that is spoken in that comune, your greatest chance of success would be to pair your email or letter with a follow up phone call. If your L.I.R.A was married in Italy before they immigrated to the United States that commune will also have their marriage certificates as it is S.O.P. to file your marriage with your comune. It is important to note that the Italy is infamous for its bureaucracy for a reason. Radio silence after a request is normal. Be prepared to wait several months before your comune even acknowledges your request. and then several more weeks before you receive your required documents by mail. I’m happy to share the email template that I used to request our documents with anyone who does not speak Italian, just shoot me an email! If requesting documents from Italy is outside of your comfort zone there are plenty of services providers out there who, for a fee, will handle this for you.

If your L.I.R.A was not married until after they immigrated then you will need to reach out to the county in the U.S. where they submitted their marriage license. Remember, you need to specify that you are seeking certified copies for the purpose of dual-citizenship. Depending on how much information is given on the marriage license (e.g. whether it includes DOB) you may also need to provide the marriage application as well, or potentially documentation from the church where they were married (see how this gets very muddy very quickly in regards to who needs what, based on circumstance?). If your L.I.R.A was divorced you will also need to provide a certified copy of their divorce decree. Finally you will need to request a certified copy of their death certificate.

You will then need to repeat the process for every descendent under your L.I.R.A. You will need to identify what state and county they were born in and request vital records from that state/county, as well as the state/county in which they died (if applicable). You will need to identify the county that they were married in and then request certified copies of their marriage certificates (and divorce decrees if needed) as well. If you are applying in Italy, it is very often enough to provide the vital records and marriage/divorce records for your L.I.R.As direct line of descent. However, if you are applying in the United States will probably also need to provide documentation for their spouses as well.

Once you have all of the documents that you need you will then need to start the process of getting them notarized, requesting an apostille, and having them translated into Italian (make sure you research the method of translation that your consulate or comune requires!). All documents that are not state issued certified copies of vital records will need to be notarized. Those would be your marriage and divorce records. You will need to take them to the county of issuance and have them processed by a notary. If you can not accompany these documents yourself to have them notarized then I HIGHLY recommend shipping them in Tyvek envelopes. It may seem pricey but if you don’t you are risking having to start over on square one for these documents. Once everything that needs to be notarized has been, you then need to get apostilles for every document. Documents must get an apostille from the state of issuance. Any federally issued documents must get a federal apostille (be warned, the wait time on federal apostilles is current 13+ weeks, so plan accordingly). A time saving tip that I picked up is to scan all of your certified documents so that you can send them via email to a translator to be processed at the same time as you send your originals to get apostilles. If you are applying in Italy be prepared to then have your apostilles translated as well.

*Phew* - It’s a lot, right? Do you see why I recommend making a workhorse of a spreadsheet to keep track of where each document is at all times?! IT IS SO MUCH WORK.

BUT THE PARTY IS NOT OVER YET, FOLKS!

Once your application is ready to submit (i.e. you have compiled all of the required documents, and had them processed accordingly), you need to mentally prepare yourself for the dreaded “homework” list that, more often than not, is assigned upon submission. I suggest trying to identify potential problems before submission and to come up with a contingency plan for those issues. Documentation discrepancies are normal. Paperwork 100 years ago wasn’t exactly held to rigorous quality standards. A lot of us had ancestors who changed their first names, last names, or both, upon immigration. Some people have records where the dates don’t match exactly. Any number of things could be wrong with your documents and set off a red flag for your consulate. When that happens you may need to request supporting documentation or have legal help remediating records or obtaining a one-and-the-same decree. In cases like this you should seek out the help of a professional. This is a great time to remind you that I am not one of those aforementioned professionals. I speak to my own experiences only! “Don’t take legal advice from strangers on the internet” is to 2023, as “don’t take candy from strange people in white vans” was to 1990.

Have patience, be thorough and organized, and you’ll get through this grind and it’ll all be worth it in the end.

Best of luck!