Yes but at least they were accepted as supporting documents! Didn´t someone say they won´t even look at non-Polish documents?

 

Hi,

thats right, the non-polish docs were supporting docs, they do somewhat prove Polish nationality (e.g. the nationality of my grandparents is specified on the shipping manifest), but also the timeline of events (arrival in australia etc).

Susano, I initially searched for translators, but mine turned out to do all sorts of historical bits as well, so she helped me put the case together and suggested the additional docs as a result of her experience and sourced them from Poland. I can pass on her details if you PM me - not sure if you want to pursue it with her long distance in Australia or not?

 

I'm working with a researcher in Australia, and I am in NYC. So far, the fact that we are on different continents has made no difference.

 

congratulations oz1 - well done to you

I'm off to Poland in April, to sort things for my wedding in June, so going to travel on my new Polish passport

 

I found this article and I thought I would share it. The article is obviously light on information but it seems like Poland might be loosening the rules on citizenship. I sure hope there is nothing to hurt the chances of us in the process *crosses fingers*.

"Parliament debates on new citizenship law
2009-02-18, 14:41
Polish parliament has been working on the Senate project of a new citizenship bill. MPs agreed that new rules concerning receiving and losing citizenship rights are necessary.

The new project introduces a possibility to restore citizenship to persons who have lost or renounced it. It also widens the group of foreigners who might apply for Polish citizenship and names different ways of receiving Polish citizenship: through birth, adoption or repatriation, President's decision, being declared a citizen or restoring a lost citizenship.

Members of Polish communities abroad have for long been lobbying for a mechanism of restoring lost or renounced Polish citizenship.

The bill will now undergo a phase of corrections in parliamentary commissions. "

http://www.poland.pl/news/article,Parliament_debates_on_new_citizenship_law,id,366768.htm

 

Does anyone know if the current law permits someone to confirm thier citizenship based on adopted Polish citizen parents?

 

I believe adoption gave you the right to citizenship as far back as the 1920 act but I am certain that adoption extends citizenship to an adopted child in the 1962 act.

See:
http://www.migrant.info.pl/en/citizenship/acquiring_citizenship/adoption/

 

Here is a slight detour on the subject. Regarding the previous 2 sections where they exceeded 15 pgs. Especially the second one. Would everyone agree that we limit this unit to 15 pages before starting a 4th unit?
This way, it makes it a little easier to go through the 3rd part without excessive reams of pages to have to read through. Just want to bounce this idea of all the readers and if everyone can agree to this then 'EasyExpat' Admin can start a 4th part once this part reaches 15 pages.

 

Well, now that we have our own forum, maybe we won't need a part 4 of this thread, as people branch out and start their own threads.

 

I am trying to create a Polish Citizenship Confirmation document and I need the Polish Citizenship Act of 1951. I have a google translation from Hebrew but it will require fixing many translation errors. I have looked back through this thread but I haven't found any working links. Wikipedia has a link to an English version of 1951 but naturally it is broken.

Does anyone have a working English link or file for Polish Citizenship Act 1951?

 

Has anyone had issues with dealing with names changes/misspelling?

For example, my grandfather's name on his records leading up to arrival in the US list him as "Jozef". Later documents, including death certificate, list him as "Joseph". Similarly, the same thing happened to his wife who was "Zofia" but more recent documents in the US list her as "Sophie". I'm just wondering how much of an issue this could be?

The Polish Consulate site indicates that you have to provide any documents of legal name changes. What if there never were any legal name changes but spellings changed over time (last names are consistent however)?

 

Your name differences shouldn't be an issue because the names were just changed through translation. I had similar letter replacements Marja (Polish) > Mary & Maria (English) and I even have Iwan which in English is John or Jon, and Warsaw seems fine with all of it.

When they refer to name changes on the consulate site they are referring to legal name changes. Example Reggie Dwight > Elton John.

 

Just a couple of replies to different posts (some in the previous thread, now locked)

To Harjeet ... jus soli means that you are automatically a citizen if you are born in that country (true of most of North/South America, Australia) so someone who is Polish at birth because of parentage would NOT lose Polish citizenship by being born outside Poland. So gaining Can citizenship by being born on Can soil would not result in loss of Polish citizenship. It would have been lost only through naturalization, i.e., if the person born in Canada of a Polish father, later obtained naturalization in the US. I'm surprised a lwayer wouldn't know this (assuming I understood your situation correctly.) Unfortunately I can't point you to the law that says this.

Vital records (birth, marriage, death) would be kept in the town where the event took place (town hall or parish) and would remain there even if borders were shifted and that town became part of another country. So generally, you would check with that town, regardless of what country it was/is part of.

I've used Registered mail to send documents abroad. Though unfortunately there is no insurance coverage for the cost of re-obtaining documents if they get lost in the mail (I had to travel to another country to get some of them, so it would cost me a couple thousand $ in travel expenses, plus 2 to 3 weeks of my time to replace them) it is very safe since the mail gets signed for by employees in transit, and is kept locked up by the post offices (US and foreign) since Registered mail is also used to send valuables (jewelry, etc.)

As far as Charsky, I retained his co. sent them all the documents about 13 months ago, heard from them 1 mo ago when they requested a new document that the Polish citizenship office had requested. Recently am having trouble getting someone to answer emails, and emails are not in good English (I speak poor Polish and no Hebrew.) So, I'll keep you posted on my experience with Charsky.

 

You are absolutely right! I am also surprised that a LAWYER could ignore this... I would definitely go for another Law Firm.

 

Hi Neumann

It took over a month before my other contact noticed I sent a couple of emails in regards to funds I sent by Western Union. She sent me an email back last week that she received the money and let her coworker know and I was sent another email on 18.03.2009 from this individual requesting mailing address. So by Wednesday of next week, I should have it. Now it is to get the rest of the paperwork I need to figure out if my grandparents got naturalised when they got their Canadian citizenship.
Then I might be able to see about dealing with the paperwork for my mother. One lawyer thinks I might be able to get Polish through her.

 

I'm glad to see this thread still so active after all this time and now curiousgeorge is a mod!

Sorry I've been gone so long - very busy.

Update on my STILL unfinalized case:

Having translations certified at consulate right now, when I receive them, they'll be sent to the Wojewoda in Warsaw and should be set, assuming they don't ask for anything else. They're being kind of odd with me, even asking for a copy of both of my grandparent's letter of no record from USCIS. THANKFULLY, I already had these, otherwise I'd be waiting another year!! I supplied them with my grandfather's 1953 naturalization certificate, yet they still wanted it. Interesting and odd.

Wish me a little luck this will finally all be completed soon! (I have until May 15 to have the paperwork to them, so well see!)

Edit: No sure if I mentioned it before, but basically my straight-forward case was held up because the person assigned to my case had quit, so it was left un-reassigned for over a year. When I finally called to find out why this "shorter" process was taking so long, they told me, and reassigned it. A couple months later, they told me what I still needed to do, so I am now finishing it up. UNFORTUNATELY, the consulates require government issues originals to certify the translations. So, I had to wait an additionaly 2.5 months to get new originals because the state of NY is so slooooooow.

 

This may sound bad, but does anyone know if "grease payments" are legal/culturally accepted in Poland? I know in general in E. Europe it's a cultural norm and not only legal, but in many cases expected. I'd like to expedite this process any way possible, since I'm quickly approaching 2 years.

 

Hmmm, interesting. By certify, do you mean apostiles? Because I was having a little bit of trouble getting mine, my mother, and my fathers birth certificates official certified by NY, even though we are all born here. However the researcher I am working with told me that I can hold off on that for now because apparently Poland started accepting birth certificates from the US WITHOUT apostiles. Anyway, just a thought, if that is what you're talking about.

 

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a "shorter" process for easy cases. The cases that are submitted in Warsaw directly get priority and the consulate submissions take longer but a direct Warsaw submission is the only "short-cut" that I am aware of. Nobody in Warsaw pre-sorts the cases, so even if you have the easiest case in the world it must wait until someone actually gets to the case. The reasons the cases take so long to be processed is because they sit in a pile unread for X months before being assigned to a worker.

The fact that your case was not assigned for over a year is terrible!

Do you have a letter from the NY consulate with the final deadline for your case?

If you have a deadline for your case, then there is probably no real need to "grease" your case.

 

No, I'm talking about a $34/each page consular stamp. And, yes, they still require apostilles on all US documents, so if you don't have one, I promise you you'll need them. They just asked me to get two more done on two items I overlooked. Get them done now, NY takes for-damn-ever. 2 moths +/- via mail to get a doc, then another 1-2 months for the apostille.