As I have mentioned, I am going through the process of applying for dual citizenship from Italy by virtue of my father’s birthright as an Italian citizen. I am doing this for myself and my youngest son, Thomas, who really prompted the process. To do this we have to go through what is called a judicial review process and that requires a whole lot of documentation. The company I am using to do this is called Global Passport and they have a procedure that requires the applicant to request a number of documents from the appropriate jurisdiction. These documents are for me, my son, my deceased father and some even for my deceased mother. Every jurisdiction seems to have its own record-keeping process and they all have their own procedures for retrieving those records. My list of documents include my birth certificate from Florida, my three marriage certificates (two from New York and one from Nevada), my son’s birth certificate from New York, my son’s marriage certificate from New York, my father’s marriage certificate from California and my father’s death certificate from California. Global Passports has a template for each and every form request and from what I can tell, they have about an 80% accuracy rate, which is to say, the jurisdiction may have a requirement that Global Passports has gotten wrong or is a outdated about.
So far, the most common problem has been payment method. New York CIty, for example, is vague on payment form and Global Passports says to send a check. I have now had two checks returned because it turns out they require either a certified check or a money order. Getting a money order is a minor pain in the ass, but had I known it was required, I could have saved myself a month of back and forth. It’s interesting that Nevada has put this requesting process all online, including payment, which h is both easier and certainly more in keeping with the standards of today’s e-commerce. I also note that Nevada’s website allows for five levels of expediting. A normal certificate takes 4-6 weeks and costs $20. If you want 24-hour turnaround, it costs an extra $75. If you want 4-hour turnaround its and extra $125, 2-hour is $500 and one hour turnaround is $1,000. I find Nevada’s approach very enlightened and is probably a reflection of the high volume of marriage and divorce activities that go on in the state. Most other jurisdictions that go through the snail mail system charge $10-$30 and take weeks for turnaround with no obvious expediting options.
After you send off your request, you either get the certificate or, as I just found out in the case of Nevada (before I discovered the online options), a verification that then forces you to request the certificate. But even once you have possession of a certificate, the foreign court system requires what is called an apostille. An apostille is a specialized certificate issued by a designated authority that authenticates the origin of a public document for use in another country. The apostille serves as an international certification that verifies the signature, seal, or stamp on a public document is genuine. It’s essentially an authentication method recognized by countries that are parties to the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents, commonly known as the Apostille Convention. The apostille process simplifies the authentication of documents for international use, replacing the more complex chain of authentication that would otherwise be required. Common documents that might need an apostille include birth, marriage, and death certificates as well as court documents, academic diplomas and transcripts, corporate documents, and most notarized documents. The specific authority that issues apostilles varies by country but is typically a government office designated for this purpose. In the U.S. that is most often the Secretary of State of the given state involved. I tried in the case of Nevada to just order an apostilled certificate, but was told that it have to get the certificate first and then apply for it to be apostilled. All of this happens with added fees.
It’s interesting that you need to verify births, marriages and deaths, but you do not have to verify divorces by certificate (or at least those have not been requested yet). I suppose that either they presume that a new marriage certificate presumes dissolution of the prior marriage or else they just don’t care that much about monogamy.
There is also the added complication of name changes, which are hardly abnormal, but nonetheless complicating. There are the name changes from marriage, which everyone seems to be able to take in stride. There are also the name changes that occur when someone naturalizes as a new citizen. This too seems to be fairly routine (think Ellis Island). What is less routine is someone like my father, who changed all three of his names and has documents with as many as five different permutations of his four names. He was born Silvano Andre Prosdocimi. He divided he wanted to adopt his mother’s maiden name, Marin, as his surname to replace Prosdocimi. That would all be “normal”. But he also decided that Silvano was too ethnic, so he wanted the more dashing Andre as his first name. I have official documents that suggest his name became Andre Marin Prosdocimi, and then others that are even more official (including his U.S. naturalization papers) that declare his name to be Andre Silvano Marin. That seems to be the name on his death certificate. For several years after their divorce, my mother kept the name Prosdocimi, but then in 1964 she finally changed it to Marin, which changed my name (and my sisters’) to Marin. So my birth certificate says Richard Albert Prosdocimi and yet my first passport and social security card all say Richard Albert Marin. I thought that might be a problem and that I would be asked for an official name change document, but that has not been the case. I figure they must assume that if the U.S. government declares me to be Richard Albert Marin, who’s birth certificate says Richard Albert Prosdocimi, that is good enough for them. We’ll see if the Italian courts agree. It is noteworthy that my middle name, Albert, is the first name of my father’s father, just like my oldest sister’s middle name is Inez, which was my father’s mother’s first name. My middle sister’s middle name is Silvana, a derivation of our father’s original first name and ultimate middle name. If that sounds confusing, it is. All three of us siblings bear some part of my father’s heritage in their middle names and I retain as my last name, my grandmother’s maiden name.
My mother began life as Ludmilla Ann Uher. She married as Ludmilla Ann Prosdocimi. Her name was then changed to Ludmilla Ann Marin for most of her professional life. And finally, she remarried and became Ludmilla Ann Jenkins, the name she ended with. So, I guess name changing is part of my heritage on all sides to one degree or another.
When I finalize this document retrieval and certification/apostille process, I will have a fully authenticated version of the proof of my life through at least three generations. Hopefully the immigration and naturalization doors of Italy will stay open long enough for me to get through given all of this proof of life activity I am going through.