Our last article covered some benefits of hiring an Italian citizenship assistance provider. All of those benefits (and more) can be summed up very simply…
To reduce risk.
The process of pursuing your Italian citizenship through ancestry is an emotional roller coaster. Hiring a service provider is like riding that roller coaster with a theme park aficionado who has already ridden it countless times. They can tell you exactly when, where, and how intense each twist, turn, and drop will be.
You still get the thrill of the ride. You also get peace of mind in the process.
The problem nobody talks about
Here’s where it gets tricky. Italian citizenship assistance is legal-adjacent, and there is no regulatory authority or governing board that oversees this industry. That does have a couple immediate benefits. First, it makes DIY possible. A fully regulated industry could make DIY incredibly difficult—or even impossible—excluding many people from claiming their right to Italian citizenship. Second, it means less bureaucracy. Could you imagine more than what there already is?
Alongside these benefits, however, the lack of regulation also introduces risks. Risks that apply to citizenship hopefuls both DIYing and those hiring service providers. We may dive deeper into the full implications of the lack of regulation (and why it will likely always be unregulated) in a future article.
Since this series is focused on helping you choose a service provider wisely, let’s talk about the conditions this lack of regulation creates specific to that process.
No minimum knowledge threshold
When you hire a real estate agent or an attorney or a CPA, there’s a built-in level of trust. You know that they had to complete a certain level of education or training to be in that position. They had to demonstrate proficiency in a variety of ways by passing an exam or certification. And beyond this, these industries often require continuing education to keep their skills current.
None of this exists for Italian citizenship assistance providers.
No good standing verification
Professions with oversight bodies issue licenses or certifications in order for people to practice them. This means they can also revoke someone’s ability to practice if they don’t uphold the requirements and expectations of that profession. Anything from not maintaining minimum requirements to participating in unethical or illegal practices can get that license suspended or permanently revoked.
All this is designed to protect you as the consumer. Since this doesn’t exist in the world of Italian citizenship, you’re left to decide for yourself if a service provider is competent and trustworthy.
No ethical standards
To put it bluntly, corruption is rampant in this industry. It’s not infrequent that government officials, even at local levels, are found accepting bribes for a variety of reasons, and approving citizenship applications is no exception.
The unfortunate truth is that there are service providers who bribe (or attempt to bribe) officials to approve cases, process them faster, overlook missing documents, make illegal exceptions, and more. Bribes aren’t only financial, they can include return favors, preferential treatment by other government offices, political influence, and more.
There are many great service providers out there who are completely trustworthy in this regard. Good service providers will avoid even the appearance of any activity like this. The relationship with government offices must remain strictly professional. Processing these applications is part of their job. Period.
No recourse (or incredibly difficult recourse)
So what happens if things go sideways with a service provider? In an ideal scenario, you can work together towards a reasonable solution. Unfortunately, these situations aren’t usually ideal. What happens if a service provider refuses to do what you paid them to do? Or if they ghost you and stop responding? Or if they blame you for something gone wrong in the process?
It’s often incredibly difficult to pursue legal action in these situations. Depending on where the service provider is located, you may be looking at international legal proceedings. Costs add up hiring attorneys (potentially in multiple countries) and these cases usually take years to resolve.
The unfortunate truth—which makes us angry every time we hear it—is that most people end up resigned to the fact it’s a lost cause and either start over or abandon their dream of Italian citizenship.
This is NOT okay.
And it’s another reason we’re publishing this series.
What can go wrong
Hiring the right service provider carries the huge benefit of reducing risks. Hiring the wrong service provider opens up a world of new (and bigger) risks. Let’s talk about them.
You get abandoned
Imagine this scenario… You’ve spent months (maybe years) researching your genealogy, scouring archives across multiple countries and languages, and sending off for certificates and apostilles. You pick up and move your entire life to Italy at the direction of your service provider or citizenship attorney where they’re going to do all the heavy lifting and then…
…they disappear.
…they tell you there are problems with your case.
…they go out of business.
…they didn’t properly plan the application submission and visa timing.
…the comune won’t accept your application.
…the comune rejects your application.
…the comune fails to meet their legal timeline requirements.
You would be shocked to hear how many calls we get from people in these situations whose service provider or attorney bailed on them or doesn’t know how to proceed. And now you’re left to deal with the consequences with a ticking clock and a much lighter wallet.
We’ve helped numerous people in these scenarios. Let us tell you now that these scenarios are incredibly stressful and significantly more expensive than initially planned.
P.S. This isn’t specific to service providers; we also hear from apply-in-Italy DIY when something goes sideways at the comune.
Your case fails an audit
The Italian government is constantly monitoring and evaluating all aspects of citizenship through ancestry, especially due to the massive influx of applications in the last few years. Audits are a regular part of their process to ensure that people who are receiving citizenship are actually eligible and everything was done properly. Your citizenship can be audited for up to ten years after recognition. Here’s the important thing to know…
Audits themselves are nothing to worry about.
A good service provider will approach your entire case as if a future audit was a certainty, not a possibility. They will be intimately familiar with all the technicalities of your case and will guide you on what needs to be done to resolve those issues BEFORE the application is ever submitted. Plus, if your case is ever audited and questions arise, the service provider will be able to answer each and every one without issue. This is a huge benefit of a competent service provider.
Applications submitted by service providers who rush things forward, take shortcuts, or aren’t familiar with the possible nuances risk failing an audit. And if an application does fail an audit, they may charge you for the effort to fix their mistakes. Not to mention… do you want them fixing it if they messed it up in the first place?
Your citizenship gets revoked
Let’s circle back to the corruption topic because it’s a very real issue. When a government official is removed from office for corruption, there is often a subsequent investigation. This investigation process varies from case to case, depending on the charges, the investigators, and how far-reaching the corruption was. It’s possible—possibly even likely—citizenship applications are audited as part of the investigation.
Even in these scenarios, applications handled by competent and compliant service providers don’t have anything to worry about.
If the service provider was involved in the corruption, however, this opens the door to major risks, potentially including revocation of your citizenship.
You get banned from Italy and the entire Schengen Area
There is a delicate and precise sequencing of events when it comes to your initial tourist visa duration, submitting your citizenship application, applying for your awaiting citizenship visa, applying for family reunification visas for other family members, and all the subsequent stages. If not managed properly, you can exceed the limits of one or more of these steps. Overstaying a visa can result in a complete entry ban from Italy and all other Schengen countries. The length of this ban can vary from one to three years or more.
This also has the potential to negatively affect your citizenship application. If you end up forced to leave the country, you may not be able to complete your citizenship process since the last step in the process requires your physical presence.
Take the right risks
There are risks throughout the entire Italian citizenship process. Getting your hopes up about eligibility is a risk. Paying for documents that may confirm or deny that eligibility is a risk. Moving your life to another country to apply for citizenship involves many personal risks. These risks are all worthwhile. Whether your application is going to be accepted should not be a risk. Whether it would fail an audit should not be a risk.
A competent, trustworthy, and compliant service provider will minimize risks. The wrong service provider will increase your risk exposure.
The provider-client relationship requires a huge amount of trust on both sides. And if that mutual trust doesn’t exist, it’s not a good fit and you shouldn’t work together. The stakes are too high and the consequences too severe for everyone involved to move forward without it. In fact, it’s so important that we will tell potential clients if we don’t think we’re the best fit for them.
So how do you tell good service providers from bad ones? The rest of this series is focused on exactly that. Because most people don’t realize that the work of vetting a service provider is much different from the work of gaining expertise about the citizenship process itself. You don’t have to be an expert on all the legalities of Italian citizenship to properly vet a provider. Not needing to be an expert is the whole point. You do need to know how to vet them. We’re talking about that next.
