Are Italian Citizenship Appointments Held In Person?

Will Your Citizenship Appointment Be “In-Person” Or Will You Be Asked To “Mail-In” Your Document Portfolio?

Each Italian Consulate has its differences.

1. FIRST: each Italian Consulate here in the U.S. has jurisdiction over several States; ten (10) Consulates generally cover four (4) U.S. States or more each.

Knowing where you will be applying should always be your starting point. Please remember that where you will apply is also determined by whether you will be using your paternal versus your maternal lineage. Descendants of female ancestors may be hit by an additional qualification requirement known as the 1948 Rule which can only be challenged in the Italian Courts.
Setting up permanent residency in Italy will allow applicants to apply at local Comune. Please remember that while the timeline to receive citizenship may be shorter, there may be fiscal consequences if you set up residency in Italy. In addition, the application process will be more difficult because overall town halls are very meticulous when it comes to name and date discrepancies on US vital records. This means that you can expect several vital records, including birth records of deceased people, to have to be amended and many States here in the US now require Court Orders to correct these changes unless you can prove that it is a “transcription error”.

2. SECOND: while ALL Italian Consulates follow the same qualification requirements for Italian citizenship by descent, each Consulate tends to have slightly different documentation requirements.

In addition to the must-have Vital records of your “lineage” family members, you may be asked to provide spousal records, too; for these spouse records, a few only require birth records, others both birth and death records. You will need to check if they only require photocopies or certified copies with apostille and if they have to be translated into Italian).
If your Italian-born Ancestor became a U.S. citizen, you may want to know that some Italian Consulates also require the local (not USCIS and not NARA) Naturalization Records to be legalized with an Apostille and translated into Italian. Others will also require a Letter of No Record issued by the National Archives (NARA) only in the event your Ancestor naturalized in a local court.
You will need to check if all the US records must be translated to Italian; generally speaking, Italian Consulates require all lineage documents to be translated to Italian except for one (Detroit) that does not require any translation except for the applicant’s own generation’s documents.

3. THIRD: assuming you have been able to secure an appointment with your Italian Consulate (you are quite fortunate…) or you are registered on the “wait list”, you need to find out whether your meeting will be in person or not. Before COVID, all Italian Consulates required that you go “in person” to the appointment, which meant for many applicants making travel arrangements (for instance somebody who resides in Colorado may have to fly to Chicago for his or her appointment…), today things are different.

You will remember that during the pandemic, many Italian Consulates remained closed and canceled all appointments for quite some time. When Consulates re-opened their appointment calendar, they changed the venue and opted for a new “mail-in” procedure. If it was meant to be temporary at the beginning, it appears that a few Consulates seem to have embraced it for the long haul.
So currently the Italian Consulates that require you to submit your document portfolio by mail are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. All other Italian Consulates, that is Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, and Washington DC are and continue to be in-person meetings.

NOTE: Remember that either way, whether for an in-person meeting or to mail in your document portfolio, you will receive instructions directly from the Italian Consulate by “email”. For this reason, make sure your information on the Consular Online Booking System called PRENOTAMI is always accurate and up to date. Your appointment will always need to be CONFIRMED ahead of your meeting whether in person or not. We have detailed instructions on how to register with the PRENOTAMI Online Booking System.

What’s Next?

For those applicants who have already started to collect some of the vital records (from either Italy or the US) but are stalled or do not have time to continue the process, or for those who have collected all the required vital records, but need a thorough review to address some inconsistencies in names and dates and finalize their portfolio with apostilles and translations to Italian, My Italian Family can take you to the “Finish Line”!

In addition to our comprehensive Full “Start-to-Finish” Program, we are delighted to introduce our Collaborative Italian Citizenship Assistance Program specifically designed to assist applicants in completing their application portfolio in preparation for their appointment with the Italian Consulate, whether they apply here in the US, or in the Italian Courts if they need to the challenge the 1948 Case in Italy, or file a “Denial of Justice” case, or at the Comune by moving to Italy permanently.

Our newly launched Collaborative Italian Citizenship Assistance Program includes:

Document Review Consultation, where we audit all the documents you have already procured to determine if the documents (Italian Vital Records, Naturalization Proof Documents, and US Vital Records) are complete, issued in the right format, and properly certified, if there are any missing documents, and if there are discrepancies in names, dates of birth and place of birth that need to be corrected.

Based on the findings we provide you with a plan to "take to you the finish line" which includes:

Acquiring the additional required documents from both Italy and the U.S.
Processing the suggested corrections and amendments of U.S. vital records (if necessary).
Affixing all the Apostilles to all the required U. S. documents
Translating all the required US documents to Italian.

NOTE: We always consider the latest requirements published by the Italian Consulate that has jurisdiction over the State where the applicant resides. Document requirements change frequently, and we need to stay on top to avoid potential delays with the Consulate approval process.

How Do I Get Started?

Give us a call! We offer a FREE 15-minute Telephone Consultation for applicants who have questions regarding qualification, required documentation, estimated cost, timelines, and tips on how to make an appointment with an Italian Consulate here in the US (among other questions). We will also perform some free preliminary research to establish if you have a path to Italian Citizenship! Simply call us at 1-844-741-0848 (Option 1) Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET, and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.

Alternatively, you can book your FREE 15-minute Phone/Zoom Consultation at your convenience.