The other day I got a phone call from some guy in the office regarding my application for my karta pobytu. That was a nice suprise as I was wondering what was happening with it having not heard anything since applying. He asked me about my Polish looking surname. When I told him it was because my Grandfather was Polish he asked if I knew that I probably already had Polish citizenship.
What?
Yes that’s right – I might already have Polish citizenship. Apparently, if you have a parent or grandparent who is/was Polish then you automatically became Polish the moment you were born whether you knew it or not, regardless of where you or your parents were born!
So today I did a bit of googling to see how this could be, and what the impact would be for me.
It seems that as long as my Grandfather didn’t renounce or otherwise ‘lose’ his Polish citizenship, then by blood rights I too have Polish citizenship. The rules are complicated though because if your ancestors left Poland before 1962 (as my Granddad did) then there are a number of caveats.
To check whether I have citizenship or not apparently I need to do an application to my local embassy and supply documents such as birth certificates with translations and so on.
These are the links for more information:
Polish nationality law – good ol’ wikipedia.
Polish Embassy in London, Citizenship info – explains exactly what the rules are
Polish Citizenship, ancestry and geneology - questions and answers from polishforums.com
This has got me thinking though – what are the advantages and disadvantages of getting Polish citizenship? I have come up with the following – let me know what you reckon:
Pros:
- Will be treated like a Pole whilst in Poland, therefore bureacracy should be less complicated than it is for me now with registration, buying property etc..
- Ability to get a Polish passport. Not much use to me as a Brit, but might be useful to non-EU citizens who want an easy way to get an EU passport
Cons:
- No doubt applying for citizenship (or rather I should say “getting confirmation of citizenship” as these are two different applications) will be tedious, bureaucratic and time-consuming
- New legal responsibilities (for example you have to declare your nationality as Polish to the authorities when in Poland)
- Potential tax/legal issues could arise (I read about some guys who suddenly became obliged to do national service or pay taxes etc..)
- If you are involved with the armed services or areas requiring special security clearance then dual nationality can be problematic
This whole thing has also got me thinking about whether or not I want to be Polish or not. Would I feel comfortable having to carry an ID card? How would I feel about declaring myself as Polish? Which country would I feel I had the most allegiance to? How would this change my view of Poland?
I am still quite suprised to discover that this could be possible and will think about it all some more before deciding if I will apply or not.
Meanwhile I have written to the UK embassy with my details to find out exactly what the process involves.
Apparently the blood line can go further back than just 2 generations – which is food for thought – who knows what citizenships you might have that you don’t even know about!?!
Tags: Polish citizenship
Quite a turn up – and congratulations! As for not wanting to carry an ID card, it may yet be the norm in blighty too if the Big Brother Brigade get their way…
Cheers, Biluś :-)
Great post, mate
Obywatelstwo RP « Wychodźstwo
Thank you
Take the Polish citizenship and shove it. Don’t get me wrong – I love Poland and the Polish people – but the Polish state stinks. Until Polish bureaucrats start treating me like those wonderful British civil servants* rather than as a blethering imbecile because I get some case-endings wrong, I will not bother going for the ID card. A British passport suffices for all purposes now we’re in the EU.
* A recent phone-call to National Insurance re: my contributions status was dealt with efficiently, swiftly and courteously. The lady on the other end of the line was an angel.
you looked suspiciously handsome for a Brit;))
I’ve heard rumors that such discovery can prove to be quite problematic. People ranted they couldn’t have left Poland without first obtaining a Polish passport, which even without additional complications (such as registering a foreign birth certificate) can take weeks.
Now imagine you just came to Poland for a holiday and happened to mention about your ancestors to a wrong person. ;-)
What do you need Polish citizenship for if you are already have British? Do you collect them or something ??? :-|
Ha ha. To be honest I don’t need it at all. It would just be more convenient to have a dowód osobisty for day to day life though. Also it means I won’t have to get my British passport instantly renewed from Warsaw at great cost when it expires.
The catch is that Poland does not recognise dual citizenship. If you accept the offer of Polish citizenship, you will be recognised here as Polish only. My son was born and brought up in Poland and has a Polish father. We had to choose between Britain and Poland when he was born, and he had a one-off chance to change his British citizenship to Polish when he turned 18 last year. Faced with the non-recognition of dual citizenship, he remained British.
Hi Liz. I don’t understand what the problem is with dual citizenship. So what if Poland doesn’t recognise your son’s British citizenship? Why not have both anyway? Why give one up?
My daughters were born in Poland (with me a Brit and wife a Pole) and so they both have dual citizenship. As you say, in Poland they are only recognised as Polish, but outside of Poland they have the citizenship of whichever passport they are travelling on. My eldest daughter now has both a British and Polish passport.
Very interesting, Ben. The sequence of events was:
1990 Son born. Parents told by Polish authorities that they must choose one citizenship only. British declared (at that time for obvious reasons).
2008 Son reaches 18. Authorities complain that formalities re citizenship of son have not been completed properly. We are asked (actually, forced) to fill in a form to obtain a decision (apparently necessary for their record keeping). Decision: “Polish citizenship lost (Parents’ declaration).”
My son was then offered the chance to have a Polish passport on condition that he made the application immediately and renounced his British citizenship (he had six months in which he could choose to reverse his parants’ declaration). If he had been born in the UK he could no doubt have done as you suggest, as no decision would have been forced on us. The problem is that he was born in Poland and we were forced to decide his citizenship immediately after his birth, a declaration which still precludes Polish citizenship, despite the fact that it was a result of paranoid communist policy. Is your eldest daughter 18? If so, I wonder how she managed to get a Polish passport without giving up her British one. When she was born, how did you resolve the forced choice? I suppose if you stuck with Polish citizenship then, she could just go ahead and get a British passport later without the Polish authorities knowing anything about it.
Wow – not heard of that before! Sounds like things were done differently a few years back.
My sequence of events was:
Daughter born in 2008 in Poland. Nobody said anything at any stage about citizenship. Got her pesel and got her Polish passport. Contacted the British embassy in Poland who confirmed that she can have a British passport too as she has a British parent. Decided to file the application from the UK next time we are there as much cheaper.
Fast forward 21 years to the basement of the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. Routine security clearance interview of your daughter in connection with her job application for a modestl clerical position in the MoD.
(…)
Security Officer: .. and what have you done so far to renounce your Polish citizenship? Your holding it precludes the grant of security clearance to you, and I’m afraid the clearance is a mandatory requirement in this position.
Applicant: I had no idea it is practically impossible to renounce it. Imagine, you need a signature of their President to do this, it’s not even delegated. There are apparently tens of thousands of people waiting for it, and I can’t call because they do not answer their phones in Warsaw. Daddy was such an idiot… oh. OK… a sentimental fool, when he got me their PESEL and their passport, but now I’m kind of stuck…
Security Officer: Very well. We will be in touch. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Nice story. But my daughter is Polish whether I get her a pesel and passport or not. She was born in Poland to a Polish mother and will go to Polish school and live in Poland until she is old enough to live elsewhere. So I am supposed to write to the president now and renounce her ‘Polish-ness’? Don’t be silly.
A final irony was that two weeks after the “Polish citizenship lost” decision (by the UW), my son received an “invitation” to join the army from the UM. He quite enjoyed turning up (armed with the “decision” document) and informing them that he could not enlist as he was not a Polish citizen. Red faces!