great grand papa was a rolling stone

Well, the few remaining family sources are pretty well in agreement: my paternal paternal great-grandfather (father's father's father) almost certainly never became a US citizen. This means that he was an Italian citizen when my grandfather was born, thereby apparently passing the power of jus sanguinis of the Republic of Italy onto my grandfather, who passed it onto my father, who passed it onto me.

I'll have to verify this. Until 1906, local jurisdictions had the power to confer citizenship onto newly arrived immigrants, so if great-grandpa's citizenship records are not in New York, the probably don't exist anywhere.

What does this mean? If I can verify that my great grandpa didn't become a citizen of the US before my grandfather was born, then I should be eligible to receive an Italian (and therefore EU) passport. I don't know if I'll ever use it, but like Jason Bourne, it's nice to have more than one identity.

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My Quest for an Italian Passport

I am an American citizen. Yet I think it is time to acquire some insurance and get an EU passport. Frankly, I'm frightened of the direction this country is headed in: according to Senator Barbara Boxer the United States is "closer to dictatorship than it has ever been". We've done away with habeas corpus and due process, and I honestly can't help but feel that the people in power did not spend vast amounts of money, effort, and political capital to create a unitary executive only to give it away in 2009.

So the point of an EU passport is to have some sort of escape hatch for when things really start to get bad here. And I'm really, really, really ticked off that I have to feel this way.

Be that as it may, the purpose of this website is to document how a US citizen of Italian American goes about obtaining an Italian passport. I start off with a few handicaps: I suffered a massive fire in my house last year, so things like birth certificates, marriage certificates, and other family papers are gone. Like many immigrants, my ancestors "Americanized" their last name more than 100 years ago, which can make verification of identity a problem. My great grandparents fudged my grandfather's birthdate 102 years ago, for reasons I'll never know, which can make obtaining a birth certificate for him a problem. And it is extremely unlikely that my immigrant ancestors ever became naturalized American citizens. This works in my favor in some respects, and very much against me in others (I'm betting they never show up on a census, for instance).

Anyway, we're going to see how long this process takes, what hoops I'll have to jump through, and what the end result will be. I have a feeling I might be better off simply getting into a quickie marriage with an Irish girl to get an EU passport that way...