As you might have guessed by reading some of my earlier blog posts on the topic, I have somewhat of a love affair with Italy. Whether it’s visiting friends, doing marathons, attending concerts, walking the Via Francigena, or exploring the ruins at the countless historical sites, it seems like I’m always finding a reason to travel there. Is it because I love the culture, the food, the people? Is it because half of my family is Italian? I don’t know.
Growing up, I cherished my Italian family—uncles, grandparents, and even great-great-grandparents—without being conscious of their Italian heritage. They were simply kind, generous, and hardworking. It wasn’t until my late 40s that I began to embrace my Italian roots, seeking to learn everything about my ancestry and Italy itself. Over time, my pride in my Italian heritage has grown, leading me to take Italian language courses to build upon what little I already knew. More recently, I decided to go all the way by applying for dual citizenship by descent and become an official Italian citizen.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel blessed to be born an American (well, most of the time). Though I travel to Italy often, I don’t have plans to live there full-time, nor am I doing it for the healthcare perks to which I haven’t contributed. So why bother? For me, the quest for Italian citizenship is not just a new challenge or a legal process; it’s a profound journey to connect with my roots and heritage. It makes me feel more grounded and connected to at least half of who I truly am, honoring the legacy of my Italian ancestors and embracing the rich culture and history that have shaped my identity. While collecting and processing all the required documents has been slow and often frustrating, building my own case from the ground up and interacting with my Italian lawyer makes me feel good. I get a kick out of it when he tells me, “Steve, non ti preoccupare (don’t worry), you’re already an Italian citizen, we just need to get the courts to recognize that.
If anything, I should have started this project 20 years ago when I first thought about it, but dealing with very iffy health at the time put it low on my priority list. Now at age 70, I intend to see it through till the end, which could take 2-4 years. Yes, that’s right, this is a long-term project with no absolute guarantee that I will be successful in the end. But that’s okay, the time, effort, and expense are worth it to me. As long as it happens before I exit this world, I’m good.
So how does this all work? I’m using the Italian law principle known as “Jure Sanguinis,” which translates to “right of blood” and is synonymous with “by descent.” Italy considers those of Italian descent “family,” regardless of where they were born. Jure Sanguinis is the legal basis that allows descendants of Italian citizens to apply for citizenship, provided they can prove their lineage and meet certain criteria. This principle is enshrined in Italian law and is a key aspect of how Italy grants citizenship by descent.
Wow, sounds great, right? Yes, but you have to be able to show an unbroken bloodline between your last Italian-born relative (LBIR) and yourself, which is much harder than it sounds. It also depends on whether that person is male or female, when they were born, and when or if they ever became a naturalized US citizen. On top of that, the spelling of all the names on all the documents has to match.
Traditionally, if your Italian ancestor is male, you can apply for citizenship directly through the Italian Consulate. That is, if you can get an appointment. Good luck with that; depending on where you live, it can take up to 3 years to get a Consular appointment. The situation is different if your Italian lineage is through a female ancestor, especially if she was born before 1948. Before 1948, Italian women could not pass their citizenship to their children. Thankfully, this changed with the Italian Constitution of 1948, which granted women equal rights, including the ability to pass on citizenship to their children. However, this change was not retroactive, meaning that children born to Italian women before 1948 were not automatically granted citizenship. To address this, individuals with a female ancestor born before 1948, must go through a judicial process to claim their citizenship. Often referred to as a “1948 case”, this involves hiring an attorney to file a petition in the Italian courts. The court case essentially seeks to have the court acknowledge that the old law was discriminatory and that, under the current constitution, you (I) should be granted citizenship. The Italian government typically does not contest these cases, and the process is more about proving your lineage and eligibility rather than a contentious lawsuit. The process is more complex and expensive than the consular route, but it allows descendants of Italian women, as is the case for me, to claim their citizenship rights.
OK, so how do you actually prove your Italian lineage? Documents, documents, and more documents, baby. So far, this has been the most challenging part of this whole project. Not only do you have to obtain birth, death, marriage, and naturalization records, and affidavits, but every name and date on those records has to match exactly. Back in the day, it was common for errors to be made in registering with the various Civil Registries, both due to the difficulty of the language spoken by the immigrants and the difficulty of understanding the data by those responsible for registering the data, and because citizens were not yet aware of the importance of their identification with all their data and their affiliation correctly registered. Likewise, errors in indicating dates of birth were very frequent considering the fact that births were often declared to the competent offices after a long time and sometimes the true date of birth was confused with the date of the declaration. It’s therefore necessary to “clarify” or shed light on the errors committed in the documents that make up a family line, so that the judge in the case is fully aware of the correct development of the line of descent. This is done through the use of various affidavits which explain those discrepancies. Phew… that was a mouthful.
But there’s more… once you have all the required documents in your hands, they have to be apostilled by the Secretary of State’s office in the state that they were acquired in order to be used in a foreign country. Stemming from the Hague Convention in 1961, an apostille is an international certification comparable to a notarization. It verifies the authenticity of the document, making it legally valid in all member countries of that convention. After the documents are apostilled, they have to be translated into Italian, checked for accuracy, notarized as accurate, and then apostilled a second time in the state they were translated in. Talk about redundancy, not to mention time-consuming and expensive.
When all that’s done, the documents are sent to the lawyer in Italy who reviews everything and then files the court petition. This is the stage I’m at right now. From here on out, it’s basically a waiting game. Prior to this year, almost all cases were filed in Rome, but because of the rising number of 1948 cases being filed, cases are now being relegated to the jurisdiction where the Italian relative was born, in my case Palermo. The average time from filing to completion of the case is 1-3 years. Yup, like everything else, the court system in Italy moves very slowly. My case will be filed in Palermo, which has historically had a faster turnaround in processing these cares… Fingers crossed.
In the end, if Im successful , Ill receive Italian citizenship birthrights, issued an Italian birth certificate from the commune that my ancestor was born, and allowed all of the rights and privileges of those born in Italy. In addition, Ill also be able to fast track an application for a European Union passport, which in itself carries a lot of perks. Pretty cool eh?.
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