In Ingrid’s own words…
I applied for my Italian citizenship based on my mother. She is Italian, and I was born in Naples, Italy while she was still an Italian citizen. However, she gave up her Italian citizenship in 1962, and therefore I automatically lost my Italian citizenship too, as I was a minor at the time.
My first inquiries into becoming an Italian citizen were made in 2004. Due to work, I did not pursue it. In 2021, I decided to restart my quest to become an Italian citizen. As an aside, all of my family except my two siblings live in Italy. I hired ICA and the complicated process began. Over the following months all documents were put in order with the correct Apostilles as well as name corrections, and so on. When my entire completed package was sent to the Italian Consulate for review, I received a phone call from the Italian consulate telling me that there were some problems with the process. There was a lot of confusion because the process that was followed had been successful in other Italian consulates, but this particular consulate would not accept the documents.
After several meetings with the attorneys at ICA, a strategy was devised to help me move forward. We could either file a court case with the basis of the claim being that the loss of Italian citizenship wasn’t intentional, or I could go through the process of re-acquisition of citizenship, which I then pursued.
Since I needed to be registered as a resident of Italy, I took a sabbatical from the university and went to live with my cousin in Formello, outside of Rome. There were a set of steps and documents that I needed to complete. Fortunately, we were able to go to the municipality offices of Formello to find out how they could help us with the required forms and signatures. We were very fortunate to have a woman working there who had dual citizenship (Italy/U.S.), and she was familiar with the Italian bureaucracy. She collaborated with my attorneys to ensure that everything was formalized. On September 25, 2023, I was formally awarded my Italian citizenship and my Italian residency card with the codice fiscale. The mayor of Formello swore me in as an Italian citizen.
The final steps took place in Los Angeles at the Italian consulate. First, the attorneys registered me with the A.I.R.E. program as an Italian citizen living in the U.S. The final step was getting my passport which I on May 21, 2024 at the Italian consulate.
There were two very exciting moments in my journey to get my Italian citizenship. The first one was in Formello when I went to the mayor’s office and was sworn in as an Italian citizen. My cousin was with me as she had been so much help in facilitating everything for me to meet the requirements for this step in the process.
The second exciting moment was right after I walked out of the Italian consulate’s office with my new Italian passport. It was a feeling of accomplishment after such a long journey. It was also the culmination of my promise to my mother, that I would get my citizenship, although it happened after she passed away.
As stated above, my mother gave up her citizenship when she moved to the United States. She was able to regain her citizenship in 1995, and she always talked about the possibility of me applying to get my citizenship. And now I have accomplished that for myself and for her.
The experience was like a roller coaster for me. I was fortunate to have the attorneys at ICA that were resilient and supportive. They were always so responsive and explained the process with the express statement that Italian bureaucracy is complicated and can be very overwhelming and frustrating. That was exactly what it was, and I could not have done it without the work and groundwork that they laid out for me, especially when I was in Formello.
As a dual citizen, this gives me the ability to live in Italy and the EU for an extended period of time once I retire. My husband and I have talked about buying a home in Italy where we could live part time. As I said above – this was a promise that I made to my mother before she passed away, and it was important to me to fulfill that promise. As we say here, everything else is icing on the cake!
I had some complications with my mother’s documents because she was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1928. Her birth wasn’t registered at the consulate nor at local levels, as most of the related registers had been destroyed following war events. The document I had, an old birth certificate issued in Tripoli, was on parchment paper with literal stamps on them and would not be recognized by the Italian government. They determined that she was also registered in Naples after WWII by her father, so they were able to get the required documents, including my mother’s birth certificate from Naples. I guess the one thing that I would say – no matter how confused I was during the process, ICA was always patient, supportive, and gave me the feeling that it would all come together! And it did!
Ingrid has agreed to serve as a subject of this success story and has granted ICA the right to use her name and image.
