Philly Appt. Update

[ericataylor22]

So I had my appt. at the Philly consulate today and Lia was wonderful! So here are somethings that I thought I would share.

1) Be there before 9am so you can go first, otherwise you will be sitting there and waiting. I lucked out and got there a 8:45am
2) If your Italian born ancester has passed away in the US, you will need to make sure that their death certificate doesn't read that they were a citizen of the USA. If DC says this, you will have to provide all copies of Federal immigration, NARA, etc forms to the state that issued the DC and they will have to re-issue. And hopefully you aren't dealing with the stupid state of PA and having to wait 6-8 weeks for everything you send them.
3) If your or any person that is requesting dual citizenship was born OUTSIDE of the consulate region that you are requesting through, you will have to send your BC minus apostilles to your BIRTH region's consulate and request your BC be 'legalized', and then returned to you so that you can give to your CURRENT region consulate. I currently have NO idea how to do that (any knowledge or info greatly appreciated) and not exactly sure what that means.

All is all it was a quick and rather nice trip, and I am glad that I was already pending one document to send back to Lia otherwise I would have been greatly upset to learn about items 2 and 3 which I hadn't heard mentioned anywhere before. or maybe I just missed them. Whew! =-)

[caridimondo]

Thanks for posting this! I have my appointment in Philly in 3 weeks and am still racing to get everything apostilled/translated. It's really unfortunate that they're requesting all of that for the death certificate, because my GGF had citizenship when he died. I don't understand this request though because when someone is naturalized, they're a citizen. Isn't the important part that they were not citizens of the US at the time of their child's birth?

[caridimondo]

Another question for you - what did you present for the marriage certs? I received 3 different documents (marriage record certification from clerk, copy of marriage license application, copy of marriage record) from the Chester County court house and I'm not sure which ones need to get apostilles and translated.

[ericataylor22]

You should be okay if you can prove birth of grandparent BEFORE naturalization of GGF, in my case, there was not naturalization, hence the problem of the DC showing citizenship.

As for marriage certificates. For my GGF I had certified copy recording their marriage from the comune in Italy, for GF had marriage license and marriage certificate on one form, for mom had marriage license and certificate. Lia was relieved that I had the marriage licenses for those born in the US, so I would make sure you got those and marriage certificates BOTH apostilled. From my understanding marriage and divorce certifications are not enough proof of anything, so if you think you need them for any reason, get apostilled. Hope this helps!

And make sure you are the first one there in the AM, when I got out at 10am there were tons of people waiting in line to be seen.

[caridimondo]

Ok that makes sense. Thanks for all the advice! When is your next appointment to provide the remaining docs?

[ericataylor22]

That is actually a nice thing, I don't. Lia just asked me to mail them in and reference my case file number. the file never expires, so my only timeline is my own, which is soon because I move to Roma at the end of July.

[caridimondo]

That's great. I've heard all good feedback about her, so that makes me feel a little better. I hope to move to Roma in the next year as well - do you mind me asking what your plans are?

[ericataylor22]

Don't mind you asking at all. I am going back to school at American University of Rome after 10 years out of school, going to study art history and italian studies for 2 years, then hopefully find a job in Roma or Firenze. You?

[caridimondo]

That's awesome! I work for an ad agency in NY so I'm hoping I can transfer to an office in Italy or find a job with another agency. If that doesn't work out, I might go the teaching English route for a while until I make some connections. But that means getting a CELTA certificate because I don't have a teaching degree.