Great-Great Grandfather Naturalization Continued....

My Aunt had told me that she thought her father had naturalized sometime in the 1940s. So I emailed the Northeast regional division of the National Archives which is located in New York City. In my email I requested a search for the petition for naturalization. I included the name, birthdate (I received this from my Aunt), location of naturalization (My aunt thought Newark, NJ). I also included the approx date of naturalization and the $10 fee for the search. I email this search request on Jan 30th, 2004.

I received a response back on Feb 6th, 2004. I was amazed at how quickly they responded. I was told that they did in fact find the petition for naturalization for Galliano Severini and they would be sending me a certified copy in the mail. This was great news! I received the petition for naturalization a few days later. The date Galliano naturalized was April 8th, 1940. Given that my grandfather was born in 1925, this proved that he did pass down Italian citizenship to his children.

Now that I knew this, I could move forward with the process of collecting all the required birth, marriage and death certificates. What I decided to do was to collect all of the documents, but not get the apostilles because I wanted to meet with the Consulate first to have them review what I had to make sure I did qualify before I continued.

Naturalization

The first thing I had to do was get some more specific information on my great grandfather. I needed to find out when exactly he came over to the US and then when he naturalized, if he naturalized. I knew that my grandfather was born in the US in 1925, so my great grandfather must have come before that. Given that my family settled in the New Jersey area, on a hunch I decided to check the records at Ellis Island. The website for Ellis Island is a great resource. A quick search showed that Galliano Severini, my great grandfather arrived at Ellis Island on Jan 6, 1921 at the age of 24. He was from Manoppello which is in the province of Pescara and he left on a ship out of Naples. I finally had my first piece of concrete information.

My grandfather passed away in 1998, but his sister, my great Aunt is still alive. I figured she would be the best source of information on her father Galliano. I contacted her and explained to her my plans of Italian citizenship. She was more than willing to help and she was able to provide me critical information regarding dates of birth, marriage, etc. She was pretty sure that he naturalized, but not until the 1940s. This was great news because given that my grandfather was born in 1925, that meant that Italian citizenship was infact passed down to him. Unfortunately my Aunt didn't have the papers but she thought he naturalized in Newark NJ. So for me to know for sure I needed to get proof of when he naturalized and that meant contacting the Northeast regional division of the National Archives....

Dual Citizenship

When I first started mentioning to people that I was thinking about applying for Italian citizenship, the first question by many of them was "are you allowed to have dual citizenship as an American?" There was also alot of concern about what would happen to my US citizenship.

A quick search on google gave me a number of sites that explained the US stance on dual citizenship. In a nutshell, since 1967 the US allows for its citizens to hold more than one passport. One of the other very important things that I had to understand was that I already had Italian citizenship if I met the requirements. I was not naturalizing to Italy. I was born with it because it was passed down through the generations. This was important for me to understand so that I could explain it to people that were concerned that I might be jeopardizing my US citizenship.

I am not going to explain all the details of the laws here since there are so many websites that already go into detail. The ones that I used were:

myitaliancitizenship.com - They have a great FAQ on the laws of dual citizenship.
Dual citizenship FAQ - I found this site through expatsinitaly and it was very helpful in explaining the laws.
US State Department - This is the official stance on Dual Nationality

So after I was comfortable with what I was about to do, the next step was to start collecting documents to find out if Italian citizenship was in fact passed down to me....

Jump ahead to Jan of 2004.....

One weekend Erin (my fiance) and I were talking about living abroad. We had traveled to Italy in the Fall of 2003 for vacation and it was awesome. Again, we realized that the best chance of getting oversees was if one of us could work freely in the EU. I decided to look again online. This time I came across a website called myitaliancitizenship.com. I followed their instructions to see if I qualified for Italian citizenship. One of the first things I noticed was that it said that I could in fact apply through my great grandfather as long as there was a direct bloodline to him and he was born in Italy. I couldn't believe it! In fact, I didn't believe it and I knew there had to be a catch. Well, there was.

I then read what I feel is the most important piece of info. If my great grandfather was born in Italy and then naturalized in the US BEFORE my grandfather was born, then he would have given up his Italian citizenship and therefore never passed it down to my grandfather. I had no idea what the answer was to this. Unfortunately my grandfather had passed away a few years ago and my immediate family wasn't sure of the specifics.

But before I began to dig deeper, one thing was nagging at me. I had read about the dual citizenship requirements from the Italian website, but I had never looked at what the US said about being a dual citizen.......

Why Italian Citizenship?

I have always been interested in travel. I moved a lot (over 10 times) as a child, so I think it became ingrained in me. As an adult, every three years or so I would get the itch to pick up and go somewhere different. However, I have never lived abroad and until just a few years ago, I had never been to another country. That changed in 2003 when I had to go to London for work. I was there for only a few days, but after, I knew that living abroad was something I wanted to do. At that time I was also dating my fiancé who has spent time abroad and has a passion for Italy that even I can't comprehend.

Slowly I began looking at what my options were. My focus at first was not Italy at all. I knew that London would probably be the easiest way to make the transition. I work in IT as a Network Administrator so my hope was to be able to find a job in that area.

As I began my search it became clear to me that the biggest hurdle I/we would have moving to Europe was finding work and being there legally. I had heard about getting dual citizenship, but it never occurred to me that I would be able to do it.

Let me back up a sec........I am pretty much a product of the US melting pot. My mother's side is Jewish from England, Russia and who knows where else. We are not sure when they came over, but I knew my maternal great-grandmothers and they were born in the US, so it's been awhile. My father side is 100% Italian descent. My paternal great-grandparents immigrated at the beginning of the 20th century. Growing up I was always aware of my Italian family history from the stories of my grandparents. However, like a lot of immigrant families of the time, my grandparents were brought up as Americans and lost their Italian roots.

Although I knew some of my ancestors were from Italy, I would never consider myself Italian. As I began reading more on dual citizenship I started thinking about my ancestors and when they might have immigrated. I was able to quickly find out that my paternal great-grandfather was the most recent to immigrate in the early 1920s. I did a quick search about Italian citizenship and unfortunately I came across some incorrect info that said that you can only apply for Italian citizenship going back one generation. Since it didn't appear that I qualified, I stopped thinking about the idea and figured that the only way I was going to work abroad was if I was sponsored and got a work visa.........

From the beginning...

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and I do not claim to know the actual laws surrounding getting citizenship to another country outside the US. I am just a guy who has gone through the process and has actually completed it. If you are looking for specific information regarding the laws of dual citizenship, please contact the INS or the Italian Consulate in your area.

Ok, enough of that...

So why am I doing this blog? Well, It took me about a year and half to complete the process of getting Italian citzenship. Along the way I gained a lot of knowledge on the process and now that it's done, I hope to pass this info along. My goal is to start from the beginning and once I get to the present, I will begin posting on the steps we are taking to eventually make the move to Europe. Along the way I hope to meet and interact with people who are in similar situations or that have already made the jump abroad.

That's all for now....