Anyway, the next stop is right back to Venice. By this time ,my husband, attorney that he is, decided we needed to have an Italian Immigration lawyer assist us in moving forward. Even if we actually could get all this done in Venice, he believed we should have someone who is familiar with the system accompany us to each office. We made an appointment with an Immigration lawyer for the next afternoon. This woman reviewed each of my documents, and then told us she would discuss this with a colleague who worked at the Commune in the Citizenship office and get back to us.
My husband Mike also emailed another Immigration lawyer in Bologna because his website had alot of information about the dual citizenship process in Italy. This second Attorney helps alot of immigrants through the complex paperwork process, so we thought we should have him take a look at my documents. By this time, 30 days out of the 90 days we were allowed to stay in Italy on our passports had been chewed up, and I hadn't made much progress. We made a train trip to Bologna to meet with the attorney there the next day. After examining my documents, he and his colleague decided there could be a problem because of a law which said my mother gave up her Italian citizenship when she married an American soldier. I tried to explain that we had already had some information from the Italian Consulate about that. The attorney (Luigi) planned to shop my documents around to some small communes in the area around Bologna to see if any of them would accept my case. If they accepted me, then he could start the citizenship process, which would include establishing residency in that small commune. Once residency was established, and all of my documents were processed, then I would be granted citizenship. This could all take up to 3 months. I left copies of my documents with him and went back to Venice hopeful, but skeptical.
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