Transmission of Citizenship After Acquisition/Recognition

[safelyon]

I am currently researching the legal process for acquisition/recognition of Italian nationality through my maternal great-grandmother. My great-grandfather emigrated to the U.S. and naturalized in 1904. My great-grandmother married him in 1909 and became a U.S. citizen de facto by virtue of her marriage (she never went through a naturalization process and never renounced her Italian nationality). The agency that has been helping me says that I now have all the documentation necessary for the legal filing to recognize Italian nationality through my mother, grandfather, and great-grandmother.

For reasons related to my employment, I prefer to assist my mother in this process to acquire Italian nationality and then in the future have my Italian nationality recognized through my relationship to her. In other words, I do not wish to be a participant in the legal filing. However, the attorney is telling me that even when my mother has her Italian nationality recognized with a birth certificate, notation of citizenship, and Italian passport, I would not be able to apply myself by virtue of my relationship to her; I could only do that through the legal process related to my great-grandmother.

This does not make any sense to me, and I am wondering if it is accurate. Is citizenship acquired by this means not transmissible?

Thank you!

[arturo.c]

Fact is, before the law on citizenship was changed in 1912, allowing Italian spouses of foreign citizens to maintain their citizenship even if they automatically acquired another nationality by marriage, all Italian women who married foreign men living abroad, and by virtue of their marriage acquired their husbands' citizenship, automatically ceased to be Italian.

That means that when your grandmother was born neither of her parents held Italian citizenship, therefore she couldn't pass her citizenship to her children, as she never held Italian citizenship.

[mler]

Citizenship acquired through the recognition process (either through the courts or through the consulates) is certainly transmissible. However, the key is that it is only automatically transmissible to minor children. Adults must apply for recognition on their own and, unfortunately, that means an entirely new process.

As an aside, that is why it’s important for Italian citizen parents to register their minor children in AIRE.