Episode 3.33 - Our Family’s Three-Year Journey To Italian Dual Citizenship

Paper trails rarely tell a straight story, especially when you gather more than twenty relatives on a single quest for Italian dual citizenship. We open the door to our process—the wins, the stumbles, and the strange moments—so you can see what it really takes to turn family lore into legal status. From old certificates with misspelled names to a notary who balked at a bilingual page, we unpack the real-world hurdles and the practical workarounds that kept us moving.

You’ll hear how we split costs across one application, organized a cross‑generational document hunt, and set up powers of attorney so our legal team could file in Italy. We talk through translations, certifications, and apostilles, plus the little systems that saved us: shared checklists, version control, and a single point of contact. When a church fire erased marriage records, we leaned on affidavits and “no record found” letters to satisfy the lineage trail without inventing facts. The lesson: bureaucracy rewards precision, persistence, and calm.

If you’re mapping your own path to dual citizenship by descent, this story offers a blueprint. Start early, triple‑check every name and date, and expect the unexpected. Find professionals who know the Italian courts, prepare bilingual documentation that’s properly notarized, and keep a clean record of every request and response. We’re closing in on the finish line now, dreaming of the day we step off a plane as citizens with passports in hand. If this journey resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who’s chasing their roots, and tell us your best tip—or your wildest paperwork plot twist—in a review.

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Chapters

• 1:13 Kicking Off The Citizenship Quest
• 1:51 Herding A Big Family Application
• 2:45 Fixing Errors And Legal Hurdles
• 3:16 Translation, Notaries, And Apostilles
• 5:27 Missing Records And Affidavit Workarounds
• 6:13 Hope, Next Steps, And Contact

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:38

Hey, this is Gia's Italian Kitchen. I am thinking about our citizenship. Are you an Italian citizen or you have dual citizenship or you've gone through that process? Ma'am, leave me a comment and let me know what your experience was. So this is our journey. So our big huge family, there's lots of us. So when we have a family reunion with all the kids and everybody, there's like 50 people, which I guess really isn't that huge, but um 50 people, and we all try to we rent one house and we all try to stay in one house. Um, so that's a challenge. Uh lots of people though. Anyway, um we are in the process of getting our dual citizenship with Italy, and as you can imagine, that's a lot of documents with all those people. Um, not everybody's doing it for uh one reason or another. There's a few that that we're not able to, but um, there's a lot of us that are, and over 20. And we're all on one application, so we can share some of the costs, which is awesome, but then you've got on one application um so many documents because you need birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, um all sorts of crap. It's been quite a journey. So we're almost at the three-year mark of this process, and we are almost there. But we've had, you know, like back from when you know, we had a marriage certificate that had the wrong middle name on it, or it was there was another one, I think it was just spelled wrong, but it had um, you know, it wasn't you couldn't directly trace that lineage from looking at the documents. So we had to get a few things reissued. Um what else was there? Powers of attorney for the lawyers to act on our behalf when the documents get over into Italy into the court system. Um yeah, some money shelled out, of course, that we all had to share. Um and then all so then all these documents have to get translated into Italian in order to submit to the court system uh before it even goes to filing. So my gosh, this has like been insane. And it would have been way quicker had we not had so many people on it, but um, you know, we decided to do it as one big family, so we have to wait for all of the documents to get signed and notarized and apostled and translated and certified, like literally all of those words had to happen to all of these documents. It was absolutely insane. Um well, then you got we had one that was one of the notaries said that they couldn't so that one of these documents was um on one page, left half was Italian, right half was English, the exact same everything with a signature down at the bottom. And the notary said, Oh well, I can't notarize this document because I can't read Italian. It's like, what the heck? That's not your job. The function of the notary, correct me if I'm wrong, is to validate the person's signature based on their driver's license who is standing in front of you in English. Um, but if you wanted to read the document, the English side's right there, but you're not responsible for the content of the document, you're certifying the signature of the person. Um, so that was like an unexpected, I don't want to say argument, challenge, discussion, whatever. Um my god, it's just been one hiccup after another. Um, what was the other thing that we found? Oh, we couldn't find my grandparents' marriage certificate in Chicago. Like the church has burned down since then, and the records, some of the records were transferred. Um, but obviously we know they got married. We know exactly where they got married and when. Um was it that? Yeah, I think it was that. Just one thing after another. That then you have to like do an affidavit of um actually I don't even affidavit of something to say that like this is what really happened, and we're certifying it, and and we've you know, then you have to get a letter from the state saying no record found so that they can like say that we're all kosher. Oh my gosh, this has been a journey. So um super excited for this to happen. I hope this happens really, really, really soon. Um, so we can go next next time to Italy and actually be citizens. It's gonna be so cool. So, yeah, if you've had this experience or you've gone through this process, I would love uh your thoughts. Throw something in the comments um or send me an email, Kelly K-E-L-L-E-Y at Gia's Italian Kitchen.biz, Giaz G-I-A-S. Uh Giaz Italian Kitchen.biz B-I-Z. That'd be awesome. Um, yeah, would love to hear your thoughts, but uh hopefully I'll be posting a picture soon of my Italian passport. Yay! Anyway, have a great day, make it a great week, and uh let's get cooking. Bye bye.