Woohoo, I'm done!

After I received my Italianized birth certificate from Italy, I made an appointment to go to the Boston Consulate and complete the application process. From what I was told, this was a pretty short process where I just gave them a copy of the certificate and then signed a few items. This was pretty much the case. I showed up at the Consulate bright and earlier. This was near the end of May 2005. I gave the Consulate a copy of my "Italian" birth certificate and they filed it away with my other documents they had for me. Next, I was given a form to sign up to vote for the Italian elections. That's when it really hit me that the citizenship process was complete.

I was now officially an Italian citizen. For me, being told this was exciting, but I knew I wanted an Italian passport so that I could have physical proof and also be prepared for the future. They gave me my file to bring to the passport and visa office down the hall. It was already crowded, but I knew I wanted to get the process completed, so I waited. After about two hours I was called into a small office. The gentleman in the office asked what I was applying for and I gave him my file and explained I wanted to get an Italian passport. He took my file and also made a copy of my US passport. I filled out a basic application and gave him approx $43 in exact change. He told me that they should have my passport in about a week. The whole process took about ten minutes once I got into the office.

A week later and went back to the Consulate and picked up my passport. I was finished! It was now officially about a year and a half from when I first started the document collecting process. Although it was a long time, I know I was very luckily that it didn't take longer.

So what is next? In my next post or two I am going to list a timeline so that the steps that I took can be more easily followed. Also I would like to get some feedback from all of you. I know that this blog is being read by a number of people, but I would like to know if it was helpful and if there are any questions on the steps that I took. I can be reached directly at mfseverini@gmail.com.

Ciao a tutti!

What do I do????

So now that I was on my last straw, I had to figure out a way to get the information I needed from my Commune in Manoppello. When I spoke to the Consulate in Philly, I was told that once they sent the documents to the Commune, that is where their job ends. They can send a request by mail to find out the status, but that would more than likely take a long time too considering how long it had been taking for my Commune to resond. So I call my Consulate in Boston to see what they could do to get the ball rolling for my application. Again, I was told that they couldn't contact the Commune because that wasn't their job and it also would cost too much money. I was told that the best option would be for me to find someone who spoke Italian or was in Italy who could call the Commune on my behalf and have them send the documents I needed.

Well, I didn't know anyone in Italy and didn't know anyone that spoke Italian well enough to call the Commune. So what I did was contact the people at myitaliancitizenship.com where I had gotten my other documents from Italy. They said that they could definitely contact the Commune on my behalf for a small fee. I basically needed to make a vital statistics request, but for myself and my father. So I submitted a request for a copies of my recorded birth certificate as well as my father's birth certificate from my Commune.

So four weeks go by and I didn't hear anything back. This was the middle of Feb 05. I sent an email requesting status of the request. I received a response back telling me that they still didn't get a response and that they would let me know once they did.

So, I decided to stop thinking about it and just let the weeks go by. Weeks turned into months and in April I got an email with an update. Since they hadn't heard anything after eight weeks from when they submitted the request, they called the Commune to get an update. They were told that they were unable to locate the request for the certificates! They asked that they resubmit the request via fax. So, that's what they did.

A month later in May of 2005, I finally got an email from ICGS (myitaliancitizenship.com) that they had received both a copy of my recorded birth certificate as well as my father's from the Commune di Manoppello and that they were sending them to me. This was great news!

I received the certificates in the mail a few days later. It was very strange to see my US birth certificate translated into Italian. I sent my father's birth certificate to the Philly consulate and made an appointment with my consulate to go in and complete the citizenship process. After almost a year and a half I was almost finished. It was a great feeling.