Forum

[lisah]

Hi,
My boyfriend is American but his father was German and his Mother is half Polish and half French. Is he entitled to dual citzenship?
Thanks
Lisa

[Kay]

I agree hwa.
When filling out my forms I had to ask my grandmother if my grandfather ever 'renounced his polish citizenship'. She laughed and said it would have meant he needed to get an appointment with the president of poland and request it, then, the president decides if he lets you renounce it! Sooo, I took that as a no!

[Kay]

Lisah

Your boyfriend probably could gain citizenship. His mum in Polish law is a polish citizen, as 1 parent was polish. As she is a citizen, her child too automatically gets the citizenship. So I think yes he qualifies.
he may also like to look at aquiring german citizenship as well. I 'think' as its his father who was german, he maybe in with a shot. But dont take my word for it!

kay

[simonmiller]

Hello,

I'm conducting research into the experiences of Polish born people now
living in the UK, especially their working experiences and education.
It is for my Undergraduate Dissertation in Geography. The dissertation aims to look at the experiences of people from Poland who now live in the UK, and, in the light of Poland joining the European Union, how valuable they can be as members of British society. If you are now living in the UK and were born in Poland, I would be very interested in interviewing you about your experiences. This could take the form of a MSN Messenger or Yahoo Instant Messenger conversation at a time specified by you, for your convenience.

Alternatively, i can send you a questionnaire that will ask roughly the same kinds of questions that I would ask you in an interview, just give me an email requesting one. I hope to make the interviews as rewarding as possible, and hopefully the opportunity to talk about experiences and future plans will be a valuable chance for reflection. Also, your anonymity is assured.

If interested, please contact me at si_miller49@hotmail.com

Thank You

Simon Miller

[ethnic101]

Hi
I just wanted to add that my original intention of acquiring Polish citizenship was to allow my kids to become part of the European union and thanks to Poland's admission in 2004, my kids could get a bargain basement priced higher education anywhere in the union with that European union passport. It did sound later like I was taking advantage of the system and using the Polish citizenship for other means but if you're trying to do what I'm trying to do then at one point emotion starts to take over your thoughts about what you're trying to do.
I have never been able to speak the language unlike my "also born in Canada" cousins. It's only been within the last 60 days since my older daughter brought the sub ject up to education reasons that I have been able to look at my roots in a different way.I have been getting more into Poland's history and the above title rings true. The events of the 80's are obvious: the polish pope with a machinist in Gdansk Lech Walensa (his son was elected in their recent elections) and the defeats the Soviets suffered in Afghanistan and a man named Gorby in Moscow. These 4 factors could be equally weighed but the first 2 have to be weighted more.
I also found out amazing stories of how the Poles saved all of Europe from Communism by defeating the advancing Red army at the miracle of Warsaw in august 1920. None of my relatives have ever mentioned that amazing campaign when Lenin predicted that all of Europe would become communist when he overruns the Poles. It didn't happen and the circumstances shown in the site http://members.lycos.co.uk/jozefpilsudski/index2.html
As well as: http://home.golden.net/~medals/1918-1921war.html
The events mentioned blew me away because I have never heard of these battle and I am a history nut. Only the book "1919 the Peacemakers" by Margaret Macmillan covers it. Nowhere on the History channel do they cover anything like this. Just WWI and WW2 and high profile subjects. Western minds in the media cover subjects that a western mind would like to hear about. Marketing is indeed nothing more than interpreting feedback correctly.
Josef Pilsudsky is considered a national hero in Poland but would have been written up far more than he is had the events happened in western Europe.Hope you enjoy the links. It shows that when the great war started, partitioned Poland supplied 600,000 troops to Russia and 300,000 and 200,000 to Austria & Germany. Sometimes Poles on the front would hear fellows Poles would recognize the songs language etc of fellow Poles on the other side of the front. They just crossed over from 1 side to the other often. Who is going to fire on his own countryman. When the Bolshevics signed a peace treaty with Germany in 1917, the Poles and Pilsudsky in the Germany army refused to follow the orders of the German high command to now attack France and he was jailed as a result and the events of 1918-20 with Pilsudsky help created a country after 120 years of partition.
I just wanted to say that I am damm proud of my roots. It only seems fitting that I should be now that I'm applying for citizenship. What comes first the chicken or the egg? It really doesn't matter.

Ted

[SportRyder]

Hi Folks........Mike here, calling in from Washington, DC.

I am very interested in trying to obtain citizenship of Poland. I'm currently a US citizen, as was my mother, who was born here in the US, 1st generation.

Both of my mother's parents, immigrated separately to the US around 1915/1916, in advance of WW1. My grandfather, I'm told, came aboard a freighter to escape entry into the German army. Both I believe arrived via Philidelphia, PA. After arriving the two of them married.

I'm under the impression that IF I can prove Polish citizenship for either of my grandparents, I would qualify for Polish citizenship myself. I'm not sure of the legal foundation for this, since all that I can find seems to relate to sons and daughters of Polish citizens.

If anyone can assist me in whether there is a foundation for application, and what kind of documentation I will need, that would be wonderful! I'm not hopeful in being able to locate my grandparents immigration papers, and I'm guessing that a copy of their US death certificates would not be sufficient. I would be very grateful for any help as to what is needed to prove citizenship for them, and research resources for trying to nail down my grandparents polish past.

Thank you all. I apreciate your help.

I was wondering, since my grandparents emigrated from Gdynia around 1920 and entered the USA via Canada, there is no record of their arrival. Also, no birth rercords, although their death certificates indicate place of birth as Poland, as do their marriage records.

How critical are the birth records for the Polish born grandparents? Although, when they were born it would have been part of Grmany or Russia. Will that matter?
Oh, so many questions........

Thanks in advance for any info,.

cheers,
Paul

[ethnic101]

It seems to me that if you can tell a story that your ancestors whether parents (like my case) or maybe just grandparents may qualify as well. If you want to know the process this consulate website from Sydney Australia clearly shows the procedure. http://www.poland.org.au/site/index.php?id=241

I would email the consulate in your country: they will respond quickly with YES or NO that only grandparents birthplace qualifies.
For the person trying to trace parents grandparents arriving in Canada first, this site only covers 1925-35 (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivi ... 802_e.html) Records before are only on microfiche in the capital Ottawa.
If they did arrive at Ellis Island, then this site is great: http://www.ellisisland.org/

Hope this helps
Ted

[Kay]

Hi

Kay here. To qualify for citizenship you need to prove you have 1 parent or grandparent who is polish, or 2 great grandparents. Getting the docs like birth certificates could be hard.

Well I applied for confirmation of citizenship almost 1 year ago now and havent heard a thing!
I emailed the polish consulate in Sydney and they replied over 15,000 Australians alone applied last year, so the queues are large!
kay

[bd]

Well I applied for confirmation of citizenship almost 1 year ago now and havent heard a thing!
I emailed the polish consulate in Sydney and they replied over 15,000 Australians alone applied last year, so the queues are large!
kay

Hi Kay,

I to applied thru the polish consulate in sydney for a passport. My grandmother was polish, immigrated to Australia post world war 2 and I also managed to track down her birth certificate in Poland.

Did the consulate in sydney state an expected time on receivng citizenship? How long are passports issued after citizenship is confirmed? (I would assume its at the same time as we had to send in passport photo's with the application). Kay if you could answer any of these questions it would be of great help.

Cheers

[Kay]

Hi Bd

The Sydney consulate didnt offer a timeframe - they appear as clueless as the rest of us. One American lady on this forum though said it took 18months for citizenship confirmation to come through and she had just submit the forms to apply for the passport....not sure if she has it yet. But, if you have only applied for citizenship you havent applied for a passport. Thats the 2nd step, and you can only apply for the passport when you have your confirmation of citizenship. Ive had my confirmation of citizenship application in for about 11 months now. I dont expect to hear anything for another 6 months maybe. Then Ill need to complete the application form for a passport which is on the consulates website, but all written in Polish. Im not expecting a passport anytime soon!

[bd]

Thanks for the info Kay. Keep us posted on how you go. I will also do the same if I hear anything. I did learn first hand that one lady had citizenship confirmed after 4 months. So we will see how we go.

Cheers

[alphazip]

I've seen questions on here about Polish citizenship by descent and I'd like to give my experience. I was born in the U.S. to a Polish father. I decided that I'd like to claim Polish citizenship, so I inquired at the Polish Consulate in Chicago. The person I spoke with was not at all optimistic. He said that the fact that my father was born in Poland (and I had his birth certificate) didn't mean much. I'd have to have documentation to show that 1) he was a Polish citizen and 2) he hadn't lost his Polish citizenship by taking U.S. citizenship before 1955. The simple fact of having a surname ending in -ski and a Polish birth certificate was not adequate proof! I decided to file a claim anyway, which required filling out a form in Polish, a separate biography in Polish, and including a couple passport photos (plus a fee of about $60). After about a year, a paper came back from Poland saying that I'd have to submit more proof. Finally, after doing more searching in my father's old papers I found an old document that described him as a Polish citizen. After sending that, I received a paper from the consulate a few months later confirming my Polish citizenship. So, it's not an easy process. Important factors are: 1) Was your Polish ancestor born in Poland while it was a country? Remember...Poland was erased from the map at various times and if your ancestor was born in (say) a section ruled by Germany, Poland doesn't recognize it as a Polish birth! 2) Did your ancestor take foreign citizenship before 1955? If so, the communist-era citizenship laws stripped your ancestor of his Polish citizenship, which may have prevented him from passing it on to you. I've seen posts that say that if you had a Polish grandfather that makes you a Polish citizen. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's not that simple!

[alphazip]

I have researched the Polish citizenship laws that may have affected your Polish ancestor. If he/she lost citizenship under one of these laws, then Polish citizenship was probably not passed on to you. The relevant laws are those of 1920, 1951, and 1962.

Provision 11 of the 1920 Act stated that:
Loss of citizenship takes place:
1.When a person obtains foreign citizenship.
2. When a person accepts public office or joins the army in a foreign country without prior approval of the Polish Government.
(Persons compelled to active military service may acquire foreign nationality after obtaining permission from the Minister of Military Affairs, otherwise they are deemed to be Polish citizens.)

Provision 4 of the 1951 Act stated that:
A person is not a Polish citizen, even though he/she had Polish citizenship on 31 August 1939, if he/she resides permanently outside Poland AND:
If due to the change of Polish borders he/she
obtained foreign nationality in accordance
with international agreements or
If a person is of Russian, Bielarussian,
Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian
nationality or
If a person is of German nationality unless
the spouse of such person has Polish
citizenship and resides in Poland.

The 1962 Act does not provide that a person can lose his/her Polish citizenship unless he/she applied to renounce his/her citizenship to the Polish Authorities. It also does not provide that a person can lose citizenship without being informed that he/she lost her Polish citizenship.

What all this means is as follows:

1) If your Polish ancestor left Poland before 1951 and became the citizen of another country or voluntarily joined the military in another country, he/she lost his/her Polish citizenship and did not pass it on to any children BORN AFTER the parents lost their citizenship.

2) If your Polish ancestor lived outside Poland after the start of World War II and then, at the end of the war, became a citizen of another country due to the change in borders (examples: Russian or German), he/she ceased to be a Polish citizen.

3) As of 1962, it was not possible to lose Polish citizenship without requesting to do so.

The 1920 law is especially harsh, because anyone who had a Polish grandparent who emigrated to (say) the U.S. and became a citizen before 1951, probably cannot claim Polish citizenship through that grandparent.

Some Polish consulates are obviously more helpful than others. As I mentioned, the person I dealt with in Chicago was very pessimistic, and yet my father was born in Poland and I had his birth certificate! If I had not found a document that used the words (in Polish) "Polish citizen" to describe him, I would have been turned down by the body in Poland that rules on citizenship matters.

[DianaA]

Alphazip --

Would the 1920 Act apply to my father who entered the United States in 1912, and then served in the U.S. Army in WWI? Am I not a Polish citizen because of this?

Anyone -- how can your spouse become a Polish citizen based on your Polish citizenship?

[alphazip]

If your father immigrated to the U.S. in 1912 and voluntarily entered the U.S. Army and/or became a U.S. citizen, he would have ceased to be a Polish citizen at that time. You would only be a Polish citizen today if you were born AND WERE AN ADULT before he did either of those things. That is because children automatically became U.S. citizens if their parents became naturalized.

It used to be common in many nations for a wife to automatically gain the citizenship of her husband. However, the reverse was not true and a husband did not gain the citizenship of his wife. In any event, nowadays spouses are treated independently, except that some countries do grant citizenship to spouses after being married for a certain number of years (e.g Italy) or after living in the native country for a period of time (usually reduced for a spouse). I think Poland falls into that latter category (spouse has to live in Poland to gain citizenship), since I don't see anything to the contrary in the current citizenship act.

[alphazip]

Sorry...just re-read your question and my answer and want to make a correction. Previous to the end of WWI in 1918, Poland hadn't really existed as an independent state for most of the previous century. Therefore, if your father was born in what is now Poland before 1918, he was actually a citizen of Germany or Russia when he emigrated to the U.S. (If he came in through New York, check the Ellis Island records online and see what country is given as his place of origin.) This being the case, he most likely never had Polish citizenship to lose...unless he returned to Poland after 1918 and received a passport or other official document. So, while I was incorrect to say that the 1920 act would have stripped him of his citizenship, I think it would be very difficult to lay a claim to Polish citizenship based on your father being born in Poland before 1918 and leaving before 1918.

[DianaA]

Alphazip --

Thanks for the response. I may be wrong, but I don't think that present-day Poland believes that anyone born while their country was annexed by another country was not s Polish citizen.

[alphazip]

Diana, my father was born in the part of Poland that was considered part of Germany (West Prussia) before 1918. He is recorded on the ship's manifest (Ellis Island) as coming from Germany and his first name is spelled in the German fashion...though he definitely is the son of a Polish family and bears a -ski name. Later, he was able to get a Polish birth certificate with his sister's help (she remained in Poland). I assume these are given for areas currently in Poland if records can be located or proof of birth supplied. (Perhaps the Germans handed the records over to the Poles??) However, when I tried to prove my Polish citizenship based on his birth in Poland, I was told by the Polish citizenship department that because the birth took place before Poland was a country, it didn't really indicate Polish citizenship! I myself thought this was strange, because the Polish authorities were, in effect, recognizing Germany's claim to Polish land! In any event, what I had to do was prove that my father's Polish citizenship was recognized after 1918, which I did by locating a document that described him as a Polish citizen that he had received when he went back to Poland between the wars. So, if my experience is any guide, birth in what is now Poland before 1918 will not be accepted alone as proof of Polish citizenship.

[adamsson]

Hi folks,

I'm a Finnish citizen born in Finland, with a Finnish mother and a Polish father. They never got married though and my father is living in Poland. I'm still well connected to him. When I was born I wasn't applied for a Polish-Finnish dual-citizenship, but only Finnish (Poland was a communist country at that time...)
However now I'm in a situation where Polish passport would be symbolic and useful for me and I would like to get one in case it's possible.

Shouldn't I be eligible to acquire Polish citizenship based simply on the fact that my father and my roots from his side are 100% Polish?

There is one thing, that I actually did get Finnish nationality voluntarily and not due to a kind of exile of parents like many did. I hope this is not a problem...

Any estimates how long it would take to gain first the certification of citizenship and then the passport? (in this topic people are discussing about anything from 4 months to 18 months...)

[Ilene]

Hello everybody !

Well, here's my situation :
My grand-parents were both born in Poland. They later emigrated to France (where my father was born). To my knowledge, they never renounced their polish citizenship, although they acquired the french one. I was born in France and I have the franco-spanish dual nationality.
Can I apply for the polish nationality ? (And if I can, are multi-nationalities even allowed within the European Union ?) Would my father have to ask for it, too ?
Here it is. Of course, I know such a nationality would bring few advantages, since I'm already part of the EU, but it would be symbolic
Thanks in advance.