Ciao a Tutti,
(The content of this message covers a lot of the same ground as what I shared at dinner last night, just in more depth. Feel free to skim or skip.)
I saw many of you last night and got your signatures on the paperwork to withdraw our case from Rome. It makes me sad, but many of you have remarked about how valuable this process has been apart from actually getting citizenship. That was encouraging to me, so thank you.
But I also wouldn't be me if I wasn't wheeling and dealing and seeing if there is some way for us to get citizenship still. We've come this far; why shouldn't we see it through if we can?
I have been talking with some informed members of the Italian Citizenship Facebook group, our current lawyer Giovanni Di Ruggiero, and a few other citizenship lawyers about a slightly modified version of the case that we filed in the first place. Before we knew that the "minor issue"* could be a problem, we filed our case using a family line stemming from Arduino Lupi, Ooma's maternal grandfather. We, at the time we first started this case, assumed he would be our simpler choice. In the documents, there is a bit of ambiguity about which of our ancestors is named Filomena Lupi -- sometimes it is Ooma's mom Florence and sometimes it is her grandma Filomena D'Amico, using Arduino's last name. The point here is this: we have two valid connections to Italian citizenship, Arduino and Filomena, and we chose Arduino to avoid any issues clarifying who "Filomena" is on any given piece of paperwork.
Now, since the line with Arduino is no longer viable because of the "minor issue," we are exploring applying through Filomena, Ooma's maternal grandmother. She did technically become a US citizen in 1921 when Arduino did, but she did not have any say in the matter. She did not have to fill in any paperwork, and she could not avoid becoming a citizen when Arduino did; married women simply became citizens of the US when their husbands did. As a result, Italy has regarded this as a case of "involuntary naturalization," so she kept her Italian citizenship, even though Arduino lost his.
I am actively working with our lawyer to see what paperwork we need (I have a request in to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service to see what documents they can produce for us), and I am jsut getting started with a couple of other lawyers to get their perspectives on this case. When I have more to share about what comes next, I will write again. I expect the paperwork from USCIS in about a month, so my next note will probably come then.
I anticipate that the costs associated with gathering documents will be minimal (under $100), and that, if we have a case we can file, we would be paying the cost of another initial case filing ($3500 or so). I have NOT committed us to anything; I just want to set expectations as best as I can as I am looking into this.
Thanks for reading! I just wanted to keep everyone in the loop with what I am working on. I am trying my best not to get our hopes up too much here; I want to temper expectations to avoid being disappointed again. But I think there might really be something here, which excites me too.
Grazie per Aver Letto,
(Thanks for reading,)
Noah
* When I refer to the "minor issue," I am talking about the reason that our case with the family line back to Arduino was rejected. In this case, the judge said that Grandma Florence lost her Italian citizenship when her dad Arduino naturalized because she was a minor (6 years old). If he had waited until she was 21, this would not be an issue.
(The content of this message covers a lot of the same ground as what I shared at dinner last night, just in more depth. Feel free to skim or skip.)
I saw many of you last night and got your signatures on the paperwork to withdraw our case from Rome. It makes me sad, but many of you have remarked about how valuable this process has been apart from actually getting citizenship. That was encouraging to me, so thank you.
But I also wouldn't be me if I wasn't wheeling and dealing and seeing if there is some way for us to get citizenship still. We've come this far; why shouldn't we see it through if we can?
I have been talking with some informed members of the Italian Citizenship Facebook group, our current lawyer Giovanni Di Ruggiero, and a few other citizenship lawyers about a slightly modified version of the case that we filed in the first place. Before we knew that the "minor issue"* could be a problem, we filed our case using a family line stemming from Arduino Lupi, Ooma's maternal grandfather. We, at the time we first started this case, assumed he would be our simpler choice. In the documents, there is a bit of ambiguity about which of our ancestors is named Filomena Lupi -- sometimes it is Ooma's mom Florence and sometimes it is her grandma Filomena D'Amico, using Arduino's last name. The point here is this: we have two valid connections to Italian citizenship, Arduino and Filomena, and we chose Arduino to avoid any issues clarifying who "Filomena" is on any given piece of paperwork.
Now, since the line with Arduino is no longer viable because of the "minor issue," we are exploring applying through Filomena, Ooma's maternal grandmother. She did technically become a US citizen in 1921 when Arduino did, but she did not have any say in the matter. She did not have to fill in any paperwork, and she could not avoid becoming a citizen when Arduino did; married women simply became citizens of the US when their husbands did. As a result, Italy has regarded this as a case of "involuntary naturalization," so she kept her Italian citizenship, even though Arduino lost his.
I am actively working with our lawyer to see what paperwork we need (I have a request in to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service to see what documents they can produce for us), and I am jsut getting started with a couple of other lawyers to get their perspectives on this case. When I have more to share about what comes next, I will write again. I expect the paperwork from USCIS in about a month, so my next note will probably come then.
I anticipate that the costs associated with gathering documents will be minimal (under $100), and that, if we have a case we can file, we would be paying the cost of another initial case filing ($3500 or so). I have NOT committed us to anything; I just want to set expectations as best as I can as I am looking into this.
Thanks for reading! I just wanted to keep everyone in the loop with what I am working on. I am trying my best not to get our hopes up too much here; I want to temper expectations to avoid being disappointed again. But I think there might really be something here, which excites me too.
Grazie per Aver Letto,
(Thanks for reading,)
Noah
* When I refer to the "minor issue," I am talking about the reason that our case with the family line back to Arduino was rejected. In this case, the judge said that Grandma Florence lost her Italian citizenship when her dad Arduino naturalized because she was a minor (6 years old). If he had waited until she was 21, this would not be an issue.