Help with bureaucracy in Poland regarding citizenship

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The application for reclaiming Polish Citizenship (Consul General Vancouver) requires a "history of the family line since leaving Poland (one's Polish roots)."

Has anyone completed this application and can you offer some advice on what should be included in this section? I have to send everything for Polish translation and am hoping to reduce the number of edits.

Thanks for any help that anyone is able to offer!

Google the following: polishforums expat to poland

You'll find an incredible amount of information. Read/browse all three parts.

Hello all,

I'm writing from Australia and I'm in the process of gaining my Polish citizenship. It is a long process as you can imagine.

Several documents must be translated back and forth between Polish and English and documents need to be filed with the Polish Interior Ministry.

I'm looking for an intermediary living in Poland who would be willing to help me in my dealings with the Polish Government.

Please feel free to contact me via Private Message if you have any questions or would be kind enough to help.

Adam Jones.

I am also from Australia and considering Polish citizenship. I am wondering if it is best to attempt the process on my own or use a service such as Poltran to undertake the task. Worth the expense or not???

Depends how complex the particular circumstances are, what documents you have, how highly you value your time and how quickly you'd like to get the passport. Personally I wouldn't bother hiring a company to do what I could do myself.

Harry
I think our case is complicated...Mama was very young when her family were deported to Siberia. She against all odds made it out to Persia as did her father. He joined Anders army. Mama eventually was sent to New Zealand as an orphan. After the war her father traced her to New Zealand and they were reunited. We have difficulty obtaining her birth certificate and her parents marriage certificate.

Bucknall the advice I have been given is that it is completely unnecessary to hire a third party to help you. This is especially true since the Polish law change in May 2012.

If you are having trouble acquiring your mother's birth certificate and you know the town where she was born you will be able to contact the relevant parish and request a copy. This is a slow process and correspondence needs to be in Polish.

Thank you for your views... we know there are issues in finding the necessary certificates and the Registry Office in Warsaw are looking into it for us. When or rather if, we hear back from the Registry Office we 'might' get some good news...here's hoping but we are not banking on it. We know exactly for my grandfather and have an image of his birth record from the parish but no marriage record to Mama's mother (we only know her Christian name nothing else) or Mama's birth. We also qualify via our father but similar issues apply to him...all he has is his International Refugee Organisation travel papers that state born Poland but birth date and parents names are missing as he was an orphan. Because of the difficulties we face that is why a third party is under consideration.

Can you prove that your grandfather and your mother didn't take up any other citizenship before 1962? Under the 1951 and 1920 Polish citizenship acts, that would have lost them their citizenship. Under the 2009 citizenship act lost citizenship can be reclaimed but only by the person who lost it.


That is going to be a problem; unless his parents have never been known, just being born in Poland did not make him Polish.


Before you spend money there (or even talk to somebody who wants to charge you money to help you), you should firstly check with the Polish consulate in NZ what they think is needed. Also, check with them about your grandfather and mother taking up other citizenship(s). I'm pretty sure that there's something in the 1951 act about parents' decisions affecting their children if the children are minors.

Bucknall I completely agree with everything Harry has just written. Just to reiterate the point about paying money to a third party - it's an unregulated industry; they can and will charge you as much as they like.

I strongly recommend taking advice from the appropriate consulates. They may be able to help connect you with a reputable genealogy organisation.

I hope all goes well for you though.

It's not quite correct. Not always a man, in this case your grandfather would lost a Polish citizenship even if he became a citizenship of a different country.

It depends on a case if you need to hire someone to help you to prepare an application, a person who would help you obtain required certificates etc. If you do have most of documentation in you possession, you may do it by your own or/and if you need to obtain documentation from Poland and you know how to it. Please also note that you would need to have a proxy based in Poland to receive letters from a Polish authority if you decided to submit an application of confirmation Polish citizenship.

K_Marciniak

Can you explain what you mean by a proxy please???

If you live abroad and you want to submit the application yourself you can send it by mail or submit it in the Polish Consulate.

Please note however that the Voivode's Office will contact you later (e.g. because something is wrong with your application or to let you know its decision),by sending letters. And they do not send letters abroad...

So the letter intended for you may just be put into the files and never delivered to you... For this purpose you need a person based in Poland that would be authorized to receive correspondence from the Office - I called this person a proxy but maybe it is not the correct term in English (in Polish: pełnomocnik do doręczeń).

Hope it is clear now :)

Katarzyna

I need to express my thanks to everyone who have written in response to my query. We greatly appreciate the information provided. We would also appreciate any further information relevant that may not have been covered. I am very sure there are many questions relating to this topic we have not even thought to ask. So please members continue posting.....

proxy in general in Poland is referred to as Power of Attorney in Usa

Merged:

How can i get Citizenship in Poland ?

After complete my Masters how can i apply for Citizenship and what is the procedure ?

Your parents or your grandparents had to have Polish nationality. You need evidence for that. You cannot apply for citizenship on the bais that you studied in Poland and now want to get citizenship of an EU country and just stay.