passport control

An inquiry from a friend recently caused me to look into Estonian citizenship law. Both of our daughters are Estonian citizens -- this status was acquired by birth. They are also American citizens -- a status also acquired by birth.

I was under the impression that they would have to pick a nationality by the time they turned 18, but this does not seem to be the case. Instead, Estonian citizenship is seen as an inalienable blood right: once you've got it, you have to renounce it to get rid of it. That makes me happy; it's not a bad thing to have both US and EU citizenship. A big part of the world is your oyster.

During the early Bush years, I looked into acquiring Italian citizenship. This was around the time of the Axis of Evil speech, when I considered the idea that the "War on Terror" might spill into a number of different nations, some of them nuclear armed, perhaps requiring conscription of my young ass. This sounds far fetched now, but don't forget that Al-Qaeda had flown a plane into the Pentagon the same year, so anything appeared to be possible.

It turned out that I am entitled to Italian citizenship on the principle of jus sanguinis -- that is, I acquired it at birth without even knowing it. According to Italian law, even the great-grandson of an Italian immigrant can acquire Italian citizenship, if the immigrant's child was born before he was naturalized. The obstacle is that it has to be passed down the paternal line. This is the case in our family. My great-grandfather Salvatore Petrone was born in San Giorgio Albanese in the province of Calabria in 1894. He emigrated to the United States in 1910. My grandfather Jerry Petrone was born in 1916. In 1917, Salvatore filled out a WWI Draft Registration Card. Item 7 asks, "If not a citizen, of what nation are you a citizen or subject?" He responds: Italy. To make it clear -- that means that my great-grandfather was still an Italian citizen when my grandfather was born.

Now, I am not sure on what kind of paper chase I would have to embark should I actually go about proving my Italian citizenship to the state. We would be dealing with documents that are in most cases more than 100 years old. I doubt the Italian embassy in Washington would be very helpful. But the way the state views it, we have had a right to Italian citizenship since birth -- it's just that no one had informed us of it. Isn't that sad? Oh well, I don't know if I'll ever get that Italian passport. And things are obviously different these days. The US has Barack Obama, and Italy's still stuck with Silvio Berlusconi. Imagine calling him president?