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.........