How I Got Italian Citizenship by Descent in 16 Months (WITHOUT an Expensive Firm)

For those just starting, here are some key insights and lessons I learned from my experience obtaining Italian citizenship by descent in 16 months.

Important note: You may be an Italian citizen right now as you read this. A government doesn’t grant it to you. It recognizes that you already are a citizen (if you can prove it). The question is, can you prove it?

My Italian Citizenship by Descent Results

• Beginning to recognition: 16 months
  • Time collecting documents: 5 months
  • Time from initial court filing to victory: 11 months
• Time spent getting Italian passport: 1 month
• My Costs: Roughly $4000 (lawyers)

What’s Your ‘Why’?

Somewhere along the way, you heard that you may qualify for Italian citizenship by descent and decided to look into it. The question is, WHY? Why do you want to do this specifically? This is a tedious and frustrating process, so be sure you have a good reason for doing it. If your reason for doing all of this is ‘that’s pretty cool’, you’ll be destroyed. You need a deep motivation, such as:

• More freedom and options in life
• Plan B
• Live or work in the EU
• Pass it on to your children/grandchildren…etc

Be sure you are crystal clear on what your ‘why’ is. You will need to remind yourself why you’re doing this as you go through various roadblocks in the process.

Italian Citizenship by Descent: The A-Z Process

Want to pursue your own Italian citizenship case? Here’s how you can get started in obtaining your Italian citizenship (if you’re eligible).

Things You’ll Need

Here’s what you’ll need to pursue your own case:

• Ancestry: Use this to build your family tree and determine eligibility.
• A workflow. Make your own, or get my IC Workbox.
• Standard envelopes
• Portfolio envelope to put all of your documents in
• Stamps

Phase 1: Determine Your Italian Citizenship Eligibility

Step 1: Take an eligibility quiz to give you an idea of your eligibility for obtaining Italian citizenship by descent.

Step 2: After getting a basic idea from the quiz if you are eligible, it’s time to map out your family tree.

I suggest signing up for Ancestry to do this, as it is literally built for this and helps you find documents, birth dates, military records or anything else you may need to start to put together your Italian citizenship by descent puzzle.

Luckily one of my family members had already done a TON of work from their own genealogical interests, so that was a huge help as a good starting point.

I focused solely on the line that led to my Italian ancestor, ignoring the branches that didn’t directly connect. This helped me focus on what mattered most; my connection to my Great-Grandmother. Once I had all the info such as birth dates, marriage dates, ship manifests…etc in the family tree, I had a lot to work with.

But things got tricky due to the rules around women passing citizenship prior to 1948 because the laws didn’t allow for women to transmit citizenship to their children. I was left with some unconfirmed questions like “did she renounce?”, “did she ever naturalize?”, “did she lose Italian citizenship when her husband naturalized?”.

I started working with an Italian lawyer who knew the ins and outs of this stuff. Even though, I was still spearheading the damn thing, the Italian lawyer was there providing guidance.

Phase 2: Collect Your Documents for Italian Citizenship

The idea here is to create a ‘citizenship kit’ that proves your unbroken Italian citizenship transmission from your ancestor to you. But before we do that, let’s make sure we can handle all of this work efficiently.

Setup Your Document Workflow

You can’t control how long it takes the bureaucratic machine to churn through paperwork, but you CAN control how efficient and fast you move. Being extremely organized throughout your case is the key to speed.

Here’s what I did:

I created a smart workflow to manage everything and keep track of all of my documents and the status of each document, along with the ancestor’s name, agency responsible for the document, apostille status…etc.

Collect Your US Documents

On the US side, you can handle a lot of it yourself as most documents like birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates are public record and can be ordered from whatever government agency is responsible for them.

Just search for the type of document and state you need it from, ie: ‘birth certificates Ohio’ or ‘marriage certificates Pennsylvania’ and you’ll find the appropriate office to contact.

New York apparently is a bit trickier (from what I’ve heard), but for the most part, you can get these documents yourself by simply ordering them.

If they have an expedited option DO IT. And if they don’t officially have one, ALWAYS SAY YOU’D LIKE TO EXPEDITE IT ANYWAY.

Sometimes you can’t find certain documents. When that happens, you gotta go full Inspector Clouseau mode and SOLVE THE DAMN PUZZLE!

Here’s an example from my case: I was having a real tough time trying to locate my Great Grandmother’s marriage certificate. It wasn’t in the county where she lived. I was stuck for a bit and was starting to think this missing certificate would screw up my whole case.

After some brainstorming, I connected the dots. The address I had from the census was their ‘married home’ address, but her actual marriage took place in a different county where her parents lived.

Since women didn’t move out until they were married back then, it made sense. I called up THAT county and they had it! Finding this marriage certificate saved my entire case. Thanks brain!

Strategies to Speed Up Your Italian Citizenship Case

Look, at the end of the day it’s your job to navigate paper-pushing hell ASAP and move on with your life, not to be a good rule follower for a faceless bureaucracy that doesn’t care about your time, money, or sanity.

There are things you can do to speed up your case, simply by being persistent and not sitting idly by (until you actually have to). If speed is your priority (as was mine), then you have to be OK with being a pest and annoying the shit out of people. Personally, I’m just fine with that :D.

Here’s how I managed to shave off a lot of time:

• Following up multiple times when necessary. Communicating clearly and completely to avoid back-and-forth.
• Using lawyers to act on my behalf when advantageous.
• Finding direct contacts (name/email/number) in government offices and making them my ‘go to’ person.
• Preparing mailings in advance for contingent documents. (ie: If I needed one document before sending another, the ‘waiting document’ was prepped and ready to go.

Collect Your Italian Documents

If you’re needing documents from Italy for your citizenship case, I wouldn’t recommend trying to do that yourself.

Just pay a professional (ie: lawyer) who does this every single day, speaks fluent Italian and knows how to order the documents you need from tiny one-horse villages in Italy where they don’t speak English.

I read a comment from a guy (who didn’t even speak Italian) in one of the Facebook groups literally say that he flew to Italy, went to the local office himself only to be told to GTFO and ignored. Don’t be like that dumbass.

Just get someone who does this all the time, pay them their fee, and save time. It’s not as expensive as you think. I paid about $300 for the lawyer to collect my Italian documents.

Phase 3: Prepping Your Italian Citizenship by Descent Case for Submission

Triple Check EVERYTHING

The documents in your Italian citizenship by descent ‘kit’ need to be absolutely perfect and ready to present:

Things like misspellings, incorrect birth dates and marriage dates will completely slow you down but these things need to be dealt with.

Here’s an example of one of the discrepancies that came up (thanks to the help from one of my attorneys):

I had to correct several documents that slowed me down, but luckily with good organization it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

If you miss these small details, you’ll have trouble down the line with your case. Make sure to double and triple check every detail because those tiny errors could jeopardize your entire case!

Phase 4: Submit Your Italian Citizenship by Descent Case

Once you’ve got all your documents sorted, it’s time to submit your case!

Male Ancestor

If you are going through a male ancestor, you’ll submit your case to the Italian consulate that serves your area.

The timing for each consulate will be different, depending on where you live. You’ll fill out your application (from the consulate’s website), provide all your documents, and wait for your case to be called. This could be 2-5 years, depending on your consulate.

Female Ancestor

If your case is through a female ancestor that gave birth after 1947, then you’ll apply at your local Italian consulate, just like with male ancestors.

If your case is through a female ancestor that gave birth before 1948 (like mine), it means opening a lawsuit in Italy. I know, it sounds crazy that you would actually have to sue the Italian government, but don’t worry, this is a well-trodden path with many having already done it successfully.

Besides, it’s pretty badass to say you sued an entire country 😀

For this, I paid one of the best 1948 lawyers in Italy.

I literally MAILED all of my documents to my attorney in Italy for the case filing and began the waiting game.

Phase 5: Track Your Italian Citizenship by Descent Case

This is the fun part. You get to wait!

• For consulate cases, you might wait 1-5 years, depending on which consulate you’re going through.
• For 1948 cases, you might wait 1-2 years for your case to be heard in front of a judge.

Phase 6: Recognition for Italian Citizenship by Descent

After 11 months of waiting in the judicial queue, my case was called, reviewed and was VICTORIOUS.

I was recognized as an Italian citizen from birth.

Get Your Italian Passport

After being recognized as an Italian citizen by descent, the next step was to get the damn passport!

There isn’t much to go into detail here, but you’ll apply for it the same way you would apply for your USA passport and then need to go to the local consulate. OR, do what I did and use the ‘Honorary consulate’ for your area to save time. Going through the honorary consulate got me my passport in just 3-weeks, instead of 2-4 months I was hearing about from other people waiting in line at the primary consulate.

I went to my appointment for some paper-pushing and to give a fingerprint, which I found to be absurd, since I never had to give a fingerprint for my U.S. passport, but I was aware of it ahead of time, so went along with it.

Final Thoughts

I hope my story has provided you with some insight and inspiration for your own Italian citizenship by descent case. If you’re considering pursuing Italian citizenship by descent, I encourage you to take the leap.

Don’t let the challenges deter you – instead, let them inspire you to push forward (and remember why you’re doing this in the first place). And remember, you’re not alone. There’s a whole community of people who have gone through the same process.

Where are you at in your Italian citizenship by descent case? Leave your comment below!