th
# 78 APRIL 18 , 2016
difficult problems you
have experienced in
helping our fellow Italians acquiring their Italian passport?
The problems we encounter are mostly bureaucratic. We notice that there
is no consistency in the
practices of the Italian
Consulates tasked with
reviewing these applications. There is much undo
focus placed on minor
discrepancies within the
applicants’ records which
often have little or nothing
to do with their eligibility
for citizenship. Moreover,
the waitlist for jure sanguinis citizenship appointments at many of the Consulates exceeds two years.
It’s our impression that the
consulates would be best
served if additional staff
would be made available
to them. We were hoping
that the introduction of the
300 euro fee a few years
ago for review of citizenship by descent applications would have allowed
for this additional staff and
thus improvement in processes, but so far we have
seen no evidence of that.
Respecting the privacy,
50 | WE THE ITALIANS
www.wetheitalians.com
is there a particularly interesting or significant
anecdote you ran into
while helping people in
this matter?
In almost all cases, our genealogical research provides information to our
clients about their family
history that they did not
know before. We should
emphasize that Your Italian Passport works mostly
on cases involving Italian
immigrants to the U.S. who
arrived in the late 1800s
and the early 1900s. Certainly among the most interesting anecdotes we
remember is a case of a
client whose ancestor had