I first dreamt of obtaining Italian citizenship via jure sanguinis in the 1980’s. My grandparents are all from Italy, and I decided to base my citizenship request on my paternal grandfather, Dominic Rocco, born in Cropani, Calabria in 1890. I researched the requirements to qualify for citizenship and requested the necessary documents from relatives on my father’s side of the family, as well as from the state of New York, where my grandfather resided.
For those who don’t know what jure sanguinis is, it is the formal recognition of Italian citizenship based on one’s ancestry. If you can prove an unbroken line of descent from a parent or grandparent who was an Italian citizen, you are considered an Italian citizen yourself. You only have to prove the line of descent with the appropriate documentation.
The application process intimidated and confused me, however, and I ended up doing nothing. I made a few attempts to locate an attorney who could help me negotiate the application process, but none seemed to exist. This was back in the pre-Internet days when the ability to easily search the globe from a home computer was still years away from being a reality.
I set aside my dream of Italian citizenship. Fortunately, I kept all the documents I had collected, carrying them around in a tattered manila envelope as I moved from one place to another. My dream of Italian citizenship, although now distant, never died.
Fast forward to 2021. Retirement from my career as a freelance technical writer loomed on the horizon. In addition, the political situation in the United States of America was becoming ominous. Suddenly it seemed like a good idea to have more options about where to live than just the United States. It was time to dust off those documents I had collected in the eighties and get the application process going.
Thanks to the Internet, I found several agencies offering the services I needed to apply for jure sanguinis. After contacting two of them, I decided to submit my documents for review to Italian Citizenship Assistance (ICA) to verify that I qualified for citizenship. All my documents were still valid, but I was missing one, my birth certificate, which I later found I had misplaced. I authorized ICA, through my contact Silvia Bolognesi, to request the missing document and begin the application process.
After translating my English-language documents into Italian, it was time to submit my request to the Italian government. I could have done it myself at the Italian consulate in Los Angeles, the one closest to me, but it would have taken years to get an appointment there. I decided instead to apply in Rovigo, Italy, the comune where ICA is located.
When I first contacted ICA about applying for citizenship in Italy, the processing time was estimated to be two to three months. However, due to staffing problems caused by the pandemic, that time period became six to seven months. I moved from my San Diego home in early November 2021, submitted my documents a week after arriving in Rovigo, and hunkered down for the six- or seven-month wait.
ICA found me an apartment and walked me through the entire process of submitting my application and getting a temporary residency permit while I waited for my citizenship request to be fulfilled. During this time, whenever I had a question or issue, I would simply contact Silvia at ICA and she would help me in a timely and responsive manner. She was a pleasure to work with.
Seven months after my arrival in Rovigo, in June 2022, I received an official email approving my request for Italian citizenship. This approval came after all the Italian consulates in the three US states where I had lived verified that my paternal grandfather had not relinquished Italian citizenship prior to my father’s birth. The only step left was for the comune in Rovigo to formally issue my citizenship.
On Friday September 9, 2022 I was granted citizenship. I then obtained a national identity card, which took about another month, and am now a full-fledged Italian citizen.
Anyone applying for citizenship in Italy should note that while ICA offers efficient and professional service, the Italian government can be a different story. Once an application is submitted to the comune, processing time is subject to unpredictable factors like the availability of staffing. ICA has no control over the Italian government.
At this writing, I anticipate returning to San Diego to consider my next move. Now fully retired, I plan to return to Europe as a newly minted citizen of the EU and determine where I want to settle for the long term. I am most appreciative of ICA’s help in making my dream of Italian citizenship a reality and I look forward to many happy years of European adventures.
Written by Anthony Rocco
