A Christmas Conversation
December 199_
Sometime in the early 1990s, my wife’s cousin invited us to a Christmas Party. In the buffet line, I overheard a man excitedly relating that he had just returned from the Irish consulate where he had picked up his Irish citizenship papers. He explained to the woman he was speaking to that by documenting his relationship to an Irish-born grandparent, he was eligible for foreign-born citizenship status. He also said that in claiming such status, Ireland did not require one to renounce one’s US citizenship.
Both my father’s parents were born on the emerald isle and I vaguely remember having heard this once before, but had never looked into it. This time the idea stuck in the back of my brain.
As the Internet became popular, finding out more about this became easier. To gain citizenship you needed at least one grandparent’s Irish birth certificate and the birth and marriage certificates confirming your relationship to this grandparent. Once you were a citizen for 3 years, your wife could also automatically become a citizen. Any children born after you were registered also became citizens although those born before registration would have to be naturalized if they so chose – too late for our only child.
From time to time I would document information from my father on his side of the family or from my mother’s sister on hers. I had a pretty organized list but it was incomplete and from time to time I lost things.
In 2002, I had a contract with a joint venture engineering firm managing the development of a Wastewater Master Plan for the British Virgin Islands. This was our first time living – even temporarily – outside the United States. It was a wonderful experience and I thought it would be interesting to do more international work. During this experience, I was introduced to the realities of international politics. Many projects in developing countries are funded through grants or loans from regional or national agencies – United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the European Development Bank (EDB), etc. Often these grants come with strings attached: supplies must be purchase from the funding country; non-local employees must come from the funding area, etc. Many projects in the Caribbean are funded by the EDB and the EDB requires that folks working on the project have a EU passport.
This was just the incentive to move Irish Citizenship from a fun thing to do someday to a good thing to do to increase the range of employment opportunities for which I might be eligible.
Sometime in the early 1990s, my wife’s cousin invited us to a Christmas Party. In the buffet line, I overheard a man excitedly relating that he had just returned from the Irish consulate where he had picked up his Irish citizenship papers. He explained to the woman he was speaking to that by documenting his relationship to an Irish-born grandparent, he was eligible for foreign-born citizenship status. He also said that in claiming such status, Ireland did not require one to renounce one’s US citizenship.
Both my father’s parents were born on the emerald isle and I vaguely remember having heard this once before, but had never looked into it. This time the idea stuck in the back of my brain.
As the Internet became popular, finding out more about this became easier. To gain citizenship you needed at least one grandparent’s Irish birth certificate and the birth and marriage certificates confirming your relationship to this grandparent. Once you were a citizen for 3 years, your wife could also automatically become a citizen. Any children born after you were registered also became citizens although those born before registration would have to be naturalized if they so chose – too late for our only child.
From time to time I would document information from my father on his side of the family or from my mother’s sister on hers. I had a pretty organized list but it was incomplete and from time to time I lost things.
In 2002, I had a contract with a joint venture engineering firm managing the development of a Wastewater Master Plan for the British Virgin Islands. This was our first time living – even temporarily – outside the United States. It was a wonderful experience and I thought it would be interesting to do more international work. During this experience, I was introduced to the realities of international politics. Many projects in developing countries are funded through grants or loans from regional or national agencies – United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the European Development Bank (EDB), etc. Often these grants come with strings attached: supplies must be purchase from the funding country; non-local employees must come from the funding area, etc. Many projects in the Caribbean are funded by the EDB and the EDB requires that folks working on the project have a EU passport.
This was just the incentive to move Irish Citizenship from a fun thing to do someday to a good thing to do to increase the range of employment opportunities for which I might be eligible.
posted by J Corlss at
12:59 PM
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