Millions of Americans qualify for a second citizenship through a parent, grandparent, or even great-grandparent, and citizenship by descent has become one of the most popular paths to a second passport. What surprises many applicants is that proving your ancestry isn't always enough. Many countries also want to know who you are today, and that's where the FBI background check comes in.
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Citizenship by descent (sometimes called citizenship by ancestry or jus sanguinis, "right of blood") means a country recognizes you as a citizen because of your family line, not because you were born there or moved there. Countries with well-known descent programs include Italy, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, and Portugal, among many others. Each has its own rules about how many generations back you can claim and what breaks the chain, like an ancestor naturalizing elsewhere before the next generation was born.
For Americans, the appeal is obvious: an EU passport through an Italian great-grandparent or a Polish grandmother opens the right to live, work, and study across Europe, without giving up U.S. citizenship in most cases.
While the core of a descent application is genealogical (birth, marriage, and death records tracing your line), a number of countries also require a criminal record check on the applicant. The reasoning is simple: they're granting you full citizenship, and they want confirmation that you don't have a disqualifying criminal history.
For an American applicant, the recognized document for this is the FBI Identity History Summary, the federal-level background check drawn from the FBI's national database. State-level police checks generally don't satisfy the requirement, because they only cover one state; the FBI check covers your entire U.S. record.
Requirements vary by country and can vary by consulate, but the background check requirement commonly appears in:
Even when a country's descent program doesn't strictly require a background check, applicants often need one anyway for the residence permit they hold while living there during processing.
Two timing realities trip up descent applicants:
Many countries treat background checks as fresh evidence, valid only for 3 to 6 months from issuance. Order it too early in a multi-year genealogical document hunt and it will expire before you file. The background check is usually one of the last documents you should obtain, timed to your submission date.
Popular descent programs (Italy especially) have long waits for consular appointments. Knowing your appointment date lets you time the FBI check so it's valid on the day you appear.
If you're pursuing citizenship by descent, put the FBI background check on your document checklist early, but obtain it late. Check your target country's specific requirements, note the validity window, and time it to your filing date. We work with descent applicants regularly and can help you get the FBI background check portion of your application handled correctly and on schedule.
The FBI background check is a document that's easy to time wrong. Let us help you get it, and its apostille, handled correctly and on schedule.
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