SChiarini wrote:
What did you do?
I was surprised to learn that both of my grandfathers did naturalize, after being assured by several family members (including my mother) that they had most likely not done so. In both cases, they naturalized in "The Supreme Court of the State of New York" and the Westchester County Archives was able to provde certified copies of the Declaration of Intent and Petition for Naturalization. I backed these up by requesting the same from USCIS under the old Freedom of Information Act system which was then in place. Although I did not receive the USCIS copies in time for my appointment, NYC was satisfied with the archival copies already in possession (I have read that more recently NYC will only accept USCIS copies; don't know how true that may be).
At any rate, I did not have to deal with a "No Records Found" situation, so I can only speak to what I have heard on these boards and to what makes sense from the consulate's point of view.
Let me give you an example:
The line I intended to use for my application was through my paternal grandfather, so when I first tried the county archives, it was his documents I requested. A few months after receiving those (took just two weeks to get them!), I thought to myself, heck, I wonder if mom's father also naturalized? so I sent off a request to the county and, sure enough, after another few weeks I had his papers as well.
Time passes, lots of time, my citizenship application was entered and approved, I had my passport in hand, etc, and I decided now was a good time put some effort into researching my mom's side of the family. I am embarrassed to admit, one of the first things I did was to write to the county archives and request maternal grandfather's naturalization papers - I had completely forgotton that I already had them.
Ten days later, while going through my files, I realized my error but figured, oh well, what's done is done. Maybe the new copies will be better than the first set. A few more days pass and I get the expected envelope from the county archives; while the envelope was expected, the contents were not - it was a no records found letter!
Dear Mr. xxxxx
Per your request, we did a thorough search of our naturalization indexes, trying many variations of the spelling of the name (as spellings often vary depending on who was recording the information). Unfortunately, we did not locate a record for yyyyy yyyyyy.
...
I double-checked my request letter to see if I screwed up, but it was virtually identical to the letter I sent the first time (when they did find records).
The moral of the story: even when a competent government authority says a record does not exist, they may in fact be flat-out wrong. The consulate knows this, that's why they want no record letters from several sources and why they want assurance that a broad search was performed covering spelling and date variantrs.
