I have Italian ancestry on both my mother and father’s sides of the family and I grew up with a very strong Italian culture. My mother was always very proud of her Italian heritage and she cooked Italian food constantly. Christmas dinner in our house was a giant pot of crab cioppino to feed at least twenty-five people. Cioppino is a tomato-based seafood stew that was invented by the San Francisco fishermen in the late 1800s. The stew was usually made by combining the seafood that was left over the day’s catch, such as crab, shrimp, clams and fish, which were then mixed with onions, garlic and tomatoes, and then everything was cooked with herbs in olive oil and wine. Originally, the stew was made in homes but then as Italian restaurants spread around the wharf, cioppino became a very popular dish.

In addition to cooking, I have a passion for traveling. I was subscribed to a travel related newsletter and by chance found out about the possibility of getting Italian citizenship if you had Italian heritage. I immediately looked into it and after speaking to a few companies that did not seem reputable I found ICA. Marco was incredibly helpful and knowledgeable; his team assessed my case to see whether I was eligible to apply for Italian citizenship by descent. Luckily, I was through a 1948 case.

At first, I thought of Italian citizenship as a novelty and something fun to have, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized just how valuable it is and how many life-changing benefits I would have with it. Among these, I would be able to live, work, travel and buy property not just in Italy but also in all twenty-seven countries in the EU. Italian citizenship would also mean great education benefits for my children–tuition fees in Europe are cheaper than in the U.S. -, and access to the EU’s healthcare system, which is highly rated. I also found out that once you obtain Italian citizenship, you can pass it onto all of your future generations.

Therefore, the more I learned about Italian citizenship, the more excited I became once I realized the true lifetime value of having dual citizenship. After I found out that my family qualified I told everyone at a Christmas dinner. Ultimately, we ended up with ten family members who decided to join the application. I was very relived to hire ICA to prepare our application because I know how daunting and complex this process can be, but having Marco and his team handle the entire process for my family from start to finish was amazing. Not to mention the need for an Italian attorney. Applying through ICA was great because “we all got to apply together”. ICA also made the process easier for us and I was confident that we were in good hands all the way through.

The other family members who did not join our application and did not understand the benefits of dual citizenship are now starting to realize some of the practical benefits, and they are asking me about applying. I definitely recommend applying as a group. It is much easier to apply as a group and ICA allows you to do that.

Having ICA handle the entire process from start to finish gave me the ability to take a back seat and not have to be an active participant in the proceedings. In fact, I was able to put the process into the capable hands of ICA and trust them to get the job done and get across the finish line successfully.

Written by Mark Drews, who obtained Italian citizenship with his family through the court in Rome in 2022