Over 25 million Italians have emigrated between 1861 and 1960 with a migration boom between 1871 and 1915 when over 13,5 million emigrants left the country for European and overseas destinations.
I don't often write on this site as I am by no means an expert. I want to thank those of you who have answered some of my questions in the past as you have helped me tremendously.
After more than seven years of research and waiting, I was finally able to get everything in order to apply. The LA consulate reigns over the southern NV area where I live, so I knew I'd have another wait if I went through there. My big wish was to go through the village from which my grandparents emigrated, but the town has "testa dura" and will not accept citizenship applications. They insisted that the only way an American could claim citizenship through jure sanguinis was through the American consulates.
To make a very long story short, I found a service to help me go through a town in Italy, and last week I submitted the required documents. Everything is now in their hands, so now I wait again. Thankfully, though, I think this should take less time than going through the consulate.
The function of the communes in Italy is to serve the needs of the Italian citizens that LIVE in the commune. For an American to think that the commune of an ancestor who hasn't lived there for more than 100 years has the automatic duty to drop everything and take up complicated citizenship processing for someone who is NOT stateless is just, plain arrogant. Like Matteo Salvini the center right candidate for prime minister says, "Italians FIRST". We live here, we pay the taxes, we get the services from our communes and we don't wait in line behind strangers. Your ancestral commune is not hard-headed -- just absolutely correct to send you back to the LA Consulate.
I agree that is is not surprising that your ancestral comune refused to accept your application. The general rule is that you need to be a legal resident of the district where you apply (the consulate if that’s where you reside or the comune if that’s where you reside). Your comune is simply following proper procedure. My guess is that the service you are using has a “connection” in a comune that is willing to overlook questions of jurisdiction for a fee.
There is apparently a lot of money to be made in the recognition of citizenship process.
I'm not going to argue here. Yes, I understand what you are saying, but that was not the point. I think an Italian lawyer knows better than we do what is right and wrong information, and he said the comune gave me wrong information. Period.
No one is trying to argue with you, but it is not correct to state that comuni are responsible for processing citizenship applications on request. Consulates are established to handle governmental matters for those who do not reside in Italy. But just like a consulate will not handle your paperwork if you don’t reside within its jurisdiction, neither will a comune.
Can a lawyer circumvent this? Based on your experience and the experience of others, most definitely. Also there are some comuni in Italy that are more experienced in citizenship issues, and these are the comuni that lawyers like yours generally use.
However, it is incorrect to state that the comune is acting capriciously when it is simply following proper procedure. This type of information can be misleading to those who wish to apply in Italy. There are certainly ways to do so either through residence or through legal assistance, but the average person cannot walk into an office of his ancestral comune and expect his application to be processed. Were that the case, we would be seeing many more applications during the tourist season and many shorter wait times at the consulates.
I’m happy for you that you are able to get this done expeditiously after an exceptionally long period of research and document collection, but I don’t want to leave the incorrect impression that comunes generally handle citizenship applications because most do not. Your lawyer is correct that your comune’s insistence that you MUST apply at your consulate was wrong. However, that does not mean that your comune is obliged to handle your request. It simply means you have other options, and you do. That’s why you hired him.
As a nation state, Italy has emerged only in 1871. Until then the country was politically divided into a large number of independant cities, provinces and islands. The currently available evidences point out to a dominant Etruscan, Greek and Roman cultural influence on today's Italians. The earlies...
