Poland's citizenship by descent question. Polish great-great grandfather arrived in the USA as a kid.

Never rely on guest posters, as they tend to post complete nonsense based on obscure interpretations of the law with no basis on reality.

In particular, his blog is filled with fantasies based on his imagination.

You won't be getting citizenship with those huge unpaid ZUS bills.

Good luck waving a copy of the Treaty of Versailles at the staff in the relevant office. You could take along a copy of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Treaty of Vienna, the Magna Carta, Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars and the Egyptian Book of The Dead for good measure.


A good one will point out that Polish Citizenship did not exist in 1908, regardless of what you (who once claimed on here that Lech Wałęsa is still the lawful president!!) may wish was true in your own personal case...

On the same pathetic level as Freeman on The Land/Sovereign Citizen woo.

Roggers does seem to have some rather outlandish ideas about Polish citizenship law, doesn't he?

For someone so desperate to belong to Poland, he seems to have no will to pay those huge ZUS debts that he has.

Thank you all so much for so many thoughtful replies. I see some clear answers that say no and a couple of maybes. So I appreciate that. There is a lot of experience here.

@PTK Can you explain this further? - Other than possibly ethnic Germans living outside the borders of the Third Republic at its creation, those obligations haven't changed over time.

My family should be German, so this might affect me.

I can easily find all of my family's US birth, marriage and death records. Although, I am not excited by the apostle requirement.
If I decide to pursue this further I think I would need my great grandmother's birth record from Poland. I am an amateur genealogist, so I enjoy the hunt for documents and records. She was born in Lipno, Plock Poland in 1888. Her mother died there around 1935, so I would want to find both records. Any suggestions for how to get those records?

Additionally, since my great grandmother was never a US citizen, I wonder if there was any type of document that she would have needed in the US that was issued by Poland? Might she have had some sort of identification card?

One statement that I found earlier in this posting is - Citizenship was assigned on the basis of the 1920 citizenship law, which said that anyone born on the territory of what had just become Poland, and had not taken citizenship elsewhere, was entitled to Polish citizenship. I'm not sure if that is true, but if it is, than that might be why my great grandmother registered with the US as a Polish citizen. If this isn't true, would that make her stateless?

No, the 1920 law doesn't say that. The law says that it applies to those currently settled on the territory of the Polish State, which your great-grandmother wasn't. As she had left Poland, she had no claim to Polish citizenship.


If you can find evidence of her being issued a document by the independent Polish state after the introduction of the 1920 Citizenship Act, then you might have a small chance. However, it's unlikely - in the US in those days, it was enough to have documents issued at Ellis Island or otherwise.

The odds are that she was never recognised as a Polish citizen. You can try to prove that she was a Polish citizen, but it will cost you a considerable amount of money to put together an application that has a chance of succeeding.

However, there is some good news for you. If you can prove that two great-grandparents spoke Polish and were of Polish ethnicity, Poland will grant you permanent residency, which allows you to live and work in Poland freely. You can't use it for anything other than tourist/business travel to other EU countries, but it's a good option if you want to relocate to Poland.

Płock was in the Russian Empire then.

It is rather strange that only expats are lecturing about Polish law and none of them have any credentials.


I would contact a real attorney instead of seeking info from a forum full of trolls with an axe to grind against Americans.

At present, a real lawyer, who is also a law professor, has a case pending in front of the Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw about these issues. He certainly has credentials. If he wins, he will have increased the population of the nation, and thereby its representation in the E. U. Parliament considerably. People like Kaczynski complain that Germany has a higher population after the war, but he doesn't admit that they brought back ethnic Germans by the millions from the East, most of whom never had ancestors who were born in the modern unified German state, and gave them full citizenship when they arrived in country. In comparison, those with citizenship rights coming from the founding treaties of the Second Republic are treated with contempt by the government in Warsaw, documents to prove the claim are hidden, or have never been copied from the relevant archives in the lost lands to the East.


I advise people to do that all of the time. The laws are quite complicated, and there is great hostility against the foreign born. Its more than they don't like Americans. Many, not just those on this forum, are very threatened by the idea of Polonia returning to the fatherland en masse. But one must ask, why do naturalized Brits keeping coming to threads about citizenship by descent and trolling shamelessly? It was so bad that it was requested to start a blog for those who have gone through the process. I don't post the link, because it will get deleted.

It is worth noting that the Versailles Peace Conference went on for months in 1919 with the senior statesmen, and then for years after that by the diplomats until 1923. Much of that was about the rebirth of the Second Republic and its boundaries, and it was in more than one treaty. The Citizenship Act of 1920 in Article 2, section 3 acknowledged that those treaties granted citizenship. Those treaties were also litigated in courts in Warsaw, Vienna and the International Court of Justice. Anyone writing that people became stateless or retained the citizenship of the partitioning powers if living abroad is clearly full of excrement. The default was that people born within the boundaries of the Second Republic became its citizens.


Yes, but I think this is the wrong forum for that. Everything here gets buried in an avalanche of trolling. It is easier to read in another place.

Because you've repeated spammed your blog, which is full of misleading and false information. That's why it gets deleted on sight, and why you have to use countless guest accounts.

Eric, please don't listen to this poster. He has delusional ideas about Polish citizenship and who is entitled to it, with particularly strange ideas about how Polish law works. Its worth noting that he's been on this crusade for over a decade without success, as his claim has no merit whatsoever.

The same poster believes that Poland "hides documents" which simply isn't the case - mamy documents were destroyed during WW2. However, it's convenient for his narrative of being cheated by the country.

If you want to spend a lot of money with little chance of success, I can guide you towards an experienced lawyer who specialises in residency and citizenship issues. However, I must stress - based on the facts you've provided, you'll only have the possibility of receiving permanent residency, not citizenship.

More the feeling that they are not Polish...And being used for the passport to be free to live and work in EU

Which is exactly what his poster wants,hebce his strange and wonderful theories about who is entitled to citizenship.

Personally, I think Poland has it right - you can get permanent residency easily as long as you prove that you have at least two Polish great grandparents. They're happy to accept even documents showing that they have Polish names - so the criteria isn't tough.

However, undocumented migrants are correctly stopped from claiming citizenship to a country that they have no connection to.

And using weird ideas of retroactive legislation from a country that no longer exists...

Some of the people that this is about have a single ancestor that left what had been and later became Polish territory 120 years ago; Most of their roots are from elsewhere. They already have citizenship of a country to which they feel a greater affinity, and in many cases can't even find Europe on a map, let alone Poland.

Since 1908 (a date mentioned by a poster), Poland has had three of its own constitutions, each one legally superseding the last. There's a very good reason that the government here doesn't want or need several million people from various countries round the world who don't consider themselves Poles and don't speak the language to obtain second passports in this way. It's difficult enough for actual Poles in Kazakhstan etc, whose family members were transported there against their will within living memory, or Poles in nearby countries that actually speak Polish and live within driving distance to obtain citizenship; never mind some guy from Mexico, Nigeria, Pennsylvania, Peru or wherever who's 1/16th Polish and just wants an EU passport.

There are all sorts of bizarre legal cases that reach the courts; none succeed. Should there be by accident a positive ruling in any of these 'Sovereign Citizen/Freeman on the Land' type endeavours based on defunct laws from a state that no longer exists, you can rest assured that the government would simply enact binding legislation to clear up any loophole. However there is no loophole to clear up.


In many ways it's the equivalent of those bizarre people in some countries who try to refuse speeding tickets on the grounds that they haven't consented to be governed and try to impose a million dollar fine on the judge as they're led to the cells.

Can you elaborate on this point at all? I am considering moving to Poland in 5 years or so (after I finish education) and pursuing citizenship by descent in the interim to ease the transition. I have reviewed the law compared to my family history and consulted with a citizenship lawyer and I am confident that my family qualifies, but proving it sounds complex and I am not sure if I should try. Do you think the Polish state or the Polish people are generally averse to ancestral citizenship? I do not want to "steal" a right by technicality if it is not accepted practice. My branch of the family first left Galicia (present-day Poland occupied by Austria-Hungary) before 1920 but maintained ties... however, my father died when I was young, so I am personally not closely connected. My aunts and uncles here don't want to help me do this for political reasons (they are all much older and remember a different time), and maybe they are right. Before I found this forum I did not realize it was a controversial topic. I have only an average foreigner's knowledge of Polish politics at present and seem to have misjudged this matter. I have visited the country but that was before I knew anything about this possibility.


Additionally, I have been told of the need to look up records in early Poland, but I was never told specifically what I should seek. (I already have birth/marriage/death.) I have never heard of trying to prove nonexistent military records before. If I understand correctly my eligibility does depend on the service obligation, so if you can provide any information at all about this I will appreciate it. I will probably engage a researcher to find the records as a matter of personal interest before I decide whether to apply for citizenship. I am a little wary of relying on one firm to do the research and application because I have heard there are scams.


Can you give me an example of how a person might do that? I can't really imagine

If my Polish grandfather acquired US citizenship in 1932 before the end of the period of compulsory service in the Polish military (end of calendar year in which he turned 50), did he lose his Polish citizenship anyway the following year simply by being past 50 in age? Or was his Polish citizenship then "safe" until subsequent law changes? I ask because my father was still a minor when his father turned 50, and his father's loss of citizenship would have meant his loss of citizenship as well.

hi everyone

my grandfather was a Polish Jew - born around 1912 and left for the USA with his mother in 1916

Unfortunately I dont have any Polish documents and it seems the archives from their town were destroyed in WW2 - his family just wanted to forget everything and start over the in USA

I am in contact with some researchers to try and locate some Polish documents such as Polish birth certificate for my grandfather...to be able to prove the connection....but don;t want to pay for that unless I can get a Polish passport (and am actually eligible - in the face of some seemingly overly complex rules)

I have done some research on my own and have located - passenger manifests for my grandfather and his mother from Poland to USA, application for US citizenship of my grandfather, and some family trees going back several generations

I also have a document from the US military archive proving my grandfather did not serve in the US military.

I have been given difficulties by companies like Polaron (claimed that my birth certificate has a problem with the date and doesnt prove my father cliamed within the first year of my life since my parents didnt marry - but he did!) and Lexmotion (refused to take my case as it is special circumstances)

I visited the Polish consulate in Barcelona Spain and the director there spoke with me but seemed a bit dismissve and basically said it is on me to find all of the necessary documents.....but did make it seem like I am eligible....

Anyways,
I would really appreciate to know if I can indeed be eligible for a Polish passport

AND

if anyone can recommend a lawyer or someone to help me

I AM GOING to make this application regardless of what anyone says....but I need help as my case is difficult

thanks in advance