Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
I went through this a while back to get my Croatian citizenship. On paper, it is an easy process. I had to provide documentation proving my parents birth, their nationality and my birth. There was also a test that I had to pass in the Croatian language about our history, geography, political and judicial systems. It was mostly multiple choice and fill in the blanks.
However the process became complicated because my mother's parents were immigrants to Yugoslavia from Poland and Ukraine, and they never registered her birth there. My father came to Canada as a fugitive and officially renounced his citizenship there and declared political asylum in Canada. To make it even more complicated, he changed his name and age on his Canadian papers to better hide from the regime. And if that wasn't bad enough, he said his birth country was Croatia when in fact he was born in Bosnia (Croats in Bosnia are citizens of Croatia). It made proving his identity difficult, but fortunately someone at the consulate in Mississauga was helpful in arguing my case. I had to also request his landing papers from the office in Halifax.
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Jeez. That's much worse than my situation. First, my mother misspelled her maiden name on my birth record.
Then, my dad gave up his Italian citizenship before going back home to visit in the 70s, so that he wouldn't get stuck doing a year of military service. Also, according to Canada, he was born in Jamaica, not Italy (wtf?). And even though we figured most of this stuff out, when my sis took the documents to the Italian consulate in Edmonton, the guy there (Ambrosino) told her "there was a problem that year" in regard to the year I was born. lol.
There are strange rules to this. My dad was born in Italy, and came here when he was 10. He did not apply for citizenship until he was 30-something, and only did because he married my mother and wanted to take her to Italy on a trip. Because he married her while he was Italian, she "became" Italian. However, once he gave up his Italian citizenship (which was the year
before I was born), I was no longer eligible to get Italian citizenship through him, but, (loophole), now my mother is "Italian", so I can get it through her, even though they've been divorced for over 30 years. Except for that pesky part about "there was a problem that year".
Never change, Italy. Never lose your mystique. Nobody knows what the problem was that year, but there
was a problem that year.