Applying for Italian citizenship via jure sanguinis

November 6, 2018 10:35 PM

I'm looking for companies that experienced folks would recommend. Going the DIY route is too time consuming and risky, so I'd like to hire an agency to provide some services. I think I can do most of the US research myself. Details after the jump.

I have a good idea of who I can naturalize through (GGF, GM, F) but I need to verify that I'm eligible, obtain birth and marriage records from Sicily, figure out how to get the US records handled, and have all documents translated. I'm not clear on the exact birthplaces of my great-grandparents, so I'd need some geneological services as well. I'm looking at this agency, who have been very responsive and seem quite thorough, but are really expensive. I understand that this isn't a cheap or fast process, but SO and I were really hoping to spend less than what this company charges.

I'd appreciate any insights into this process, any recommendations to individuals or companies who provide services, and any general advice you can give about claiming Italian citizenship via jure sanguinis.

Thanks Metafilter!

posted by onecircleaday to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

There's a Facebook group called Ultimate Italy which specialises in this sort of advice.
posted by aqsakal at 4:43 AM on November 7, 2018

My parents are working on this now. Below are the links that I assembled for them when they were starting (they ended up going with ICAP). They did their first phone consultation in September 2015, so it has been a slow and complicated process, with a lot of finding and translating records and trying to figure out who applied for US citizenship, who was born here, who was naturalized through her husband's citizenship (but didn't apply separately), etc and then dealing with lawyers and courts in Italy. The application is now somewhere in the Italian court system. I'm not sure how much my parents have spent on this, but I can ask if you like.

Here is a good step by step description of the process:

Here is the application form:

Dual Citizenship Italian does phone consults, plus other services:

My Italian Family does telephone consultations to help figure out eligibility. They also help find and translate records:

Italiamerica does similar.

ICAP does essentially the same thing as the others.
posted by oryelle at 5:49 AM on November 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

I’ve got no company recommendations, but maybe hearing about our experience would be helpful.

My wife, an American citizen, went through the process of getting jure sanguinis Italian citizenship a few years ago, and definitely do get a consultant to manage the process.

I can’t recommend our consultant, though, since he was rather disorganized and slap-dash about a lot of stuff, even though he got the job done in the end. (He’s not listed in any of the links above, by the way.)

IIRC, the process took us about a year, and the consultant fee was ~ $3500 for my wife and our infant son. I can’t remember the extra costs at the consulate, translations, etc, but I reckon another $1k wouldn’t be unusual.

The Italian bureaucracy was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, and it was ongoing, complicated, and tiresome. We actually moved to Italy for several months to make things a touch easier, since there are a series of filings to make, and it’s helpful to be able to handle some of the matters in person rather than waiting for certified documents to go back and forth across the Atlantic (maybe, hopefully). Things are complicated by needing to get original documents from the Commune where your relatives were from, and those are likely in a rather disorganized stack somewhere, with a disinterested Italian bureaucrat between you and the stack.

So… auguri! And feel free to Memail if you’ve got any questions about the process!
posted by jacob at 10:50 AM on November 7, 2018

I am a semi-professional genealogist and I have successfully walked others through the Italian citizenship process; I'm familiar with the details of the paperwork and requirements and I have a contact who is a notarized translator. It's not always difficult, but the consular process is very slow-moving and under no circumstances will it take less than a year. However, most of that time is spent sitting around doing nothing.

Don't know if it's appropriate to solicit on MeFi, but if you'd like to send me a message with more particulars and what you know, I can quote you a price, either to do the genealogical research and send you a list of instructions to finish the process yourself, or a price to handle the entire project.
posted by zvs at 6:16 PM on November 8, 2018 [1 favorite]