Forum Immigration Poland - Polska

by bd » Mon Jul 16, 2007 4:12 pm

jenuine wrote:Well, I was getting itchy to leave the country so I left and am now living in London with a friend. Unfortunately, it's been a bit difficult finding a job that doesn't require a National Insurance number--I need an EU passport for that! i

You don't need an EU passport to get a NI number in the UK. As long as you are on some sort of valid visa (eg HSMP or two year working holiday) that is all that is required to get a NI number. I was in this very same situation.

Update on my citizenship application. Lodged with Polish consulate in Australia in November 2005. Contacted the office in warsaw in Feb 2007 and was given my files reference number and told that my file would be looked at in 2 months. Contacted the warsaw office again in June 2007 , still no progress on my file and not likely to be for another 3 or 4 months. Its the most inefficient process I have ever come across.

by **curiousgeorge** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:51 pm

bd wrote:Contacted the warsaw office again in June 2007 , still no progress on my file and not likely to be for another 3 or 4 months.

bd,
Did you only file for confirmation of citizenship, or did you also apply to register your birth?

Twenty months thus far and nothing. That does sound depressing. Hang in there. You must be pretty close to the front of the queue!!

by **jenuine** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:02 pm

bd,
Thanks for the encouraging reply, but I'm afraid I don't have a visa that'd allow me to work here legally. I'm an American citizen, which only allows a tourist visa. And the HSMP visa application was quite expensive--there was no guarantee that I'd get accepted so I thought I'd try my luck on my own. Unfortunately, it's been much tougher than I'd imagined. Hehe. C'est la vie.
cheers,
jenni

by **kris** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:00 am

This forum is really active with a ton of great info, so I thought I'd post here, also:

I'm married to a Polish national and we reside in the U.S.

I've gathered from the info here that our child is a Polish citizen because his father is a Polish national. So we can get him a Polish passport. Great!

QUESTION: I am a U.S. citizen with no heritage ties to Poland. With my marriage to a Polish national, is there any way I can get a Polish passport (without first living in Poland for 3 years)? Again we live in the U.S.

Any ideas?

Many thanks! It's very encouraging to find this forum.

by bd » Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:38 pm

curiousgeorge wrote:bd,
Did you only file for confirmation of citizenship, or did you also apply to register your birth?

Twenty months thus far and nothing. That does sound depressing. Hang in there. You must be pretty close to the front of the queue!!

Hi George,

I was told that I needed citizenship first before I could register my birth. So initially my application was only for citizenship

by **curiousgeorge** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:24 pm

kris wrote:QUESTION: I am a U.S. citizen with no heritage ties to Poland. is there any way I can get a Polish passport (without first living in Poland for 3 years)?

It sounds like you would have to APPLY for citizenship, and as you mentioned, I think there is a residency requirement for that, so you couldn't do it abroad. You are not automatically entitled to it simply because your spouse and child are Polish citizens.

Sorry for the bad news.

by **curiousgeorge** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:37 pm

bd wrote:I was told that I needed citizenship first before I could register my birth. So initially my application was only for citizenship

Its almost laughable how drastically they've altered the laws in the past few years. When you applied, this indeed was the process, now they require that you submit your POLISH birth certificate with your proof of citizenship application, so now you have to get your birth registered first.

by **curiousgeorge** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:16 am

Another update on my case:

This weekend my contact from Poland flew in for a visit and gave me my "Potwierdzenie Obywatelstwa" in person. We didn't want to leave in the hands of UPS or DHL, since it was so much effort to get it done, and he was due for a trip anyway, so it was a good excuse as well.

Anyway, what was really shocking was that the approval date was Sept 17th. 2006. It was submitted during the last week of August 2006. That means it only took about 3 weeks for my case to get approved!!! This is in line with my initial expectation of a month, which is what the first clerk told my contact. What seems to have happened was that the file got "misplaced" at the top of a pile assigned to a clerk who no longer works there, and it took them 8 months to notify my contact to come pick it up, because nobody was working that pile! My contact had inquired a couple of times during the 8 month period, but they kept telling him that the file is still being processed. Idiots!

The first lesson here is that doing this directly in Warsaw is EXTEMELY fast, much faster compared to the consulate which is claiming 8 to 10 months right now. Some people on this forum that have filed with the consulate have reported waiting 18 to 24 months.

The second lesson is that although you can theoretically check the status of your case, thier system is so archaic that they may not find the status of your case if they wanted to!

The third lesson is that if your case has been pending for an inordinate amount of time, who's to say that its not already approved, and its just gathering dust?