Am I eligible for Polish citizenship?
February 13, 2018 1:46 PM   Subscribe

I am a U.S. citizen. I'm trying to figure out if I can get a Polish passport, but it's really confusing. Hope me, please?

I may be transferring to my company's Munich office (yay!). Having an EU passport could make some things easier. My work will be sponsoring a work visa for me. But someone told me that I may be eligible for Polish citizenship because of Poland's ancestry laws.

Info:
My great grandmother and great grandfather came to the US, from Poland, in 1921. I found my great-grandfather's Naturalization record from 1923. My grandmother, and all of her siblings are listed as his children. There's a specific line asking if my grandfather renounces his Polish citizenship, to which he said yes. Does that automatically nullify my grandmother's polish citizenship? There are no records of a separate naturalization documents for my great-grandmother, or any of the children.
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 states that children under 18 automatically acquire U.S. citizenship (if certain requirements are met). What about prior to that? Would my grandmother have been considered a Permanent Resident?

My family is Jewish if that has any bearing on anything (but we left Poland beforeWWII).

Is this worth pursuing?
posted by Cat Pie Hurts to Law & Government (17 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Very unlikely you can do this as you cannot claim an unbroken line of citizenship, which is typically required. There are some complicated exemptions for Jewish families but I doubt you'd be eligible since your ancestors left well before WWII. But your local consulate can tell you for sure.
posted by fshgrl at 2:02 PM on February 13, 2018


Your US citizenship is immaterial.

What you need to prove is that your grandmother was a Polish citizen before her father renounced his citizenship.
This can be most easily proven by her passport or birth record. Find out where they were born, see if you can reach out to the local Jewish community there. The Polish government also has a lot of different databases where you can inquire as to any records.

Generally speaking, you need to prove that your direct ancestor was a Polish citizen. It's up to you to find the documents and present them at the Department of Citizenship and Repatriation of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration.
posted by jedrek at 2:05 PM on February 13, 2018


Here's a good source of information, btw.
posted by jedrek at 2:07 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Other things to note, if your grandmother was married before 1951, you'll need her marriage certificate to confirm the Polish ancestry of her child/your parent. Also, it's super difficult to get Polish citizenship by descent and the process can take years.
posted by Ruki at 2:07 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


(Not that she needed to be married to another Pole, but because unmarried women could not transfer Polish descent.)
posted by Ruki at 2:10 PM on February 13, 2018


with the lineage citizenship being broken on one side i think it could be difficult to prove that your great grandmother did not also renounce her citizenship upon arriving in the us without documents showing otherwise. but your grandmother was born in poland and came here as a small child, correct? so both her parents at the time of her birth were still polish citizens?
posted by poffin boffin at 2:15 PM on February 13, 2018


My wife speaks Polish, has parents who emigrated to the US in the 70's were not US citizens yet when she was born, and she still has relatives in her parents birth village (which was important because it meant we could have documents sent there and could get her parents baptismal documents). And she was the third member of her generation to get a passport so we knew exactly what need to be done in terms of translations- and the process took literally more than a year and cost us probably more than 1000 dollars. And its super clear my wife is eligible for citizenship. I was shocked how much of a sh-tshow it was.

I also have the somewhat cynical view that what you look like and how well you can argue in Polish have a major bearing on how fast you can get things done. When my wife took our (native speaking, very uhm...opinionated) nanny along with her to get passports for the kids a lot of things became much easier to get accomplished.
posted by JPD at 2:16 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


The above answers seem to ignore the fact that your grand parents and parents were not Polish citizens. I do not think you are eligible. There is a lot of misinformation in the US about EU citizenship but without an actual PARENT who is/was a citizen it's not this easy anymore.
posted by fshgrl at 3:00 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


If your grandmother was under 18 when your great-grandfather was naturalized, then she lost her Polish citizenship along with him.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 3:04 PM on February 13, 2018


The above answers seem to ignore the fact that your grand parents and parents were not Polish citizens.

Generally, speaking we don't know this--it's what the OP is trying to establish. Ignoring the specifics about Polish nationality law for a second (which is the crux of this question--more on that in a minute), they don't cease to be citizens because they (the parents) never firmly established their claim to citizenship, should they have one (e.g. by having a Polish passport). It does, however, make proving they are/were citizens that much harder. (For countries with particularly heritable citizenship, it often does all come down to the timing of naturalization relative to birth of the first generation abroad.)

Some quick googling turns up this random website which does quote legislation (with enough citation detail that you could presumably find a more authoritative source) that I read to mean your grandmother ceased to be a Polish citizen when she was naturalized. (The question about renouncing is something of a red herring here. The issue is that Poland, at the time, did not permit people to acquire another citizenship while retaining Polish citizenship. Your (great?)-grandfather could have answered "no" and it wouldn't matter from Poland's perspective.) There's a whole can of worms about restoration of Polish citizenship, but if your grandmother has passed, I believe it's irrelevant to you.
posted by hoyland at 4:11 PM on February 13, 2018


Anecdotally, Poland was notorious for imputing its citizenship to casual visitors with Polish ancestry, and until recently several countries (including the US, UK, Canada and Australia) specifically warned their citizens to be wary of this. E.g., an Australian tourist with Polish ancestry might find themselves arrested for having "evaded" military service. From the tone of the answers here this must have changed, but I think it's probably worth getting a definitive answer from a Polish immigration lawyer. It might be easier to claim Polish citizenship than you think.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:37 PM on February 13, 2018


Disputing JPD a little - in the past they were very protectionist but in recent years Poland has opened up considerably and I got Polish citizenship in 2015. My parents were born there (my dad renounced, mom didn't) but I was born in Canada. Yes it was well over $500 by the time translated notarized documents were involved. Took about a year because getting documents takes time and I didn't do some things in parallel.

Honestly call the closest consulate and ask. That's what they are there for.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:20 PM on February 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks for all of the info. It sounds like it may be more of a hassle than anything. I'm still going to try and call the Polish Consulate, but I'll keep my expectations low.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 2:27 PM on February 14, 2018


To be clear they never challenged her eligibility. It was just a bureaucratic debacle
posted by JPD at 5:11 PM on February 14, 2018


fwiw, Italy is a lot easier to get citizenship in than Poland if you have a similar situation with any Italian ancestors.
posted by fshgrl at 9:15 PM on February 14, 2018


I'm coming back to offer a warning about the site linked by hoyland above: Some quick googling turns up this random website

As a result of this thread, I decided to pursue a document search through that organization. They took my deposit and then completed exactly zero work over the course of one month. I've filed a grievance with Paypal to get my money back.

Of course, hoyland is in no way responsible for this. But, I wanted the community on the green to have the benefit of my experience.
posted by bkpiano at 8:27 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Has anyone had *positive* experiences with other companies or sites that do document searches or help with this? I may be eligible as well and am considering pursuing it (I’m Jewish, dad was born in Poland in the 40s, and I recently realized/confirmed he wasn’t naturalized elsewhere til after 1951, which is apparently relevant.)
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:08 PM on October 29, 2018


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