I am an American by birth. With the exception of those few months I spent living in Tel Aviv in 2015, I have always resided here in the United States of America. I am, however, the descendant of 20th century immigrants. I was born in New York in the late 1980s to a father whose grandparents were born and raised in Eastern Europe, and a mother who emigrated to the United States from Poland just a few years before I was born.
I have never known my extended family and for that reason have always been slightly envious of friends whose families have been in this country for generation after generation. For one thing, it seemed that they had a much easier time on Ancestry.com or the like when they looked up their families. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have that privilege. I was lucky to find a ship’s manifest or place of birth, but that would be about it. There were no military records, birth logs, or marriage certificates, as those would have been issued halfway around the world.
About three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I was having a casual conversation with my father when he mentioned to me that I might be eligible for Polish citizenship through my mother’s side of the family. This was an intriguing prospect. I have always been guilty of wanderlust. Growing up, my family was poor and we couldn’t afford to travel out of the country. Despite my best efforts, I was not able to study abroad during college due to lack of funds. I didn’t leave the US until I was 23 years old, and that was only after working like a dog the summer before and saving up every penny for the trip. I traveled to London and Paris on a shoestring, staying with family friends and getting around primarily on foot. In Paris, I slept in a utility closet in a garret at the top of spindly staircase. As far as I was concerned, it was heaven. It was great to finally be out in the world and exploring two of its great cities.
I have never been to Poland. After my adventure in Western Europe, I didn’t get the chance to travel abroad again until January of 2015, when I went on a birthright trip to Israel. I liked Tel Aviv so much that I went back that summer to live and intern at a start-up incubator there. I had already fallen in love with travel but it was during those months that I realized I actually wanted to live and work in a place far from my home. I do not wish to move to Poland (although I would love to visit), but upon conducting further research I realized that if I became a Polish citizen I would then be eligible for an EU passport, which would permit me work and travel freely within the European Union. I have always wanted the option to work in Europe, and obtaining this passport would make it considerably easier to do so.
As the pandemic had dashed any hopes of traveling abroad, I was even more motivated to find out if I was actually eligible for Polish citizenship. I researched various law firms until I found one in Kraków that had good reviews and offered a free eligibility check. After a few weeks of emails back and forth, I learned that I was indeed eligible. I was overjoyed, but the journey to locate supporting documents had only just begun. I needed to obtain my estranged mother’s birth certificate, my grandparents’ marriage certificate, and a genealogical record stating that my grandfather never became a United States citizen (he actually eventually left the US under threat of deportation). I felt overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to obtain these vital records, but I was up for the challenge.
Getting a copy of my mother’s birth certificate ended up being easy, but I then had to wait for the other two documents. To obtain my grandparents’ marriage certificate, I needed to put in a request at the NYC Municipal Archives. After a couple of months went by, I received a very exciting phone call. A kindly gentleman named Kenneth Cobb, who turned out to be the Assistant Commissioner of the Archives, called me personally to let me know that he had found this vital document. I was thrilled, and I let him know it. He wished me luck on my dual citizenship journey, and I sent him a thank you card for his efforts. A couple of weeks later, I received notarized copies of the marriage certificate in the mail.
My hunt wasn’t over yet though; I still needed to provide documentation that my grandfather never became a naturalized American citizen. I put in a Freedom of Information Act request for this last summer, and that got passed along to the genealogy division of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Someone at USCIS informed me that they were facing a tremendous backlog due to the pandemic, and that it would take some time for them to pull the relevant files. In the interim, my attorney’s office gathered all the necessary documentation on the Polish side. I waited and waited and waited. Then finally, at long last, a CD containing the documents arrived in the mail.
This was about three weeks ago. After copying the documents onto my laptop and sending my lawyer scans of the relevant pages, I ran to the shipping store to send the CD to Poland via DHL Express. The process is now out of my hands. All the documents that I worked so hard to obtain are being translated into Polish, and then once that is done they will be sent to the Polish government. If all goes according to plan, I will be granted a Polish citizenship certificate within the next few months. Then, after that, a coveted EU passport.
I cannot overstate how excited I am about my future and the possibility that it may be out of the United States. I love my country, but I want to experience the world. Watch this space for more updates on my dual citizenship journey!
~GCL~
factorycandy 