# Keeping Italian Residency status while living in the US



## Khylelund (Oct 11, 2014)

My fiancee and I are getting married in Italy later this spring. Afterwards she will apply for a visa to come live with me in the US. 

Recently she asked if she would be able to maintain her Italian residency status if she is living in the US. Our idea is that we would one day in the future return to Italy to live. She is not an Italian citizen but has been living in Italy for over ten years as a legal resident. She owns her own apartment. 

Would she be able to retain her residency status while living abroad? Or could she begin the process of applying for Italian citizenship?


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## BBCWatcher (Dec 28, 2012)

No, she would lose her residency status before too long.

Yes, she can acquire Italian citizenship assuming she has 10 years of continuous legal residence. That would be an excellent way to allow her to return any time she wishes and stay as long as she wants. "Continuous" means her absences from Italy within the past 10 years (upon date of application) must not exceed 10 months in total, and no single absence can exceed 6 months. Time spent in Italy in a temporary visa category -- as a student, for example -- does not count toward the 10 year total.

She'll need to enroll in an integration class if she hasn't already. I do not recommend her departure from Italy until she takes her oath of citizenship and obtains an Italian passport. You can start the U.S. visa process during that time (USCIS Form I-130, etc.), but I do not recommend that she proceed with the U.S. National Visa Center steps -- scheduling her interview, for example -- until she has clear visibility on her date of oath.


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## Khylelund (Oct 11, 2014)

That is sort of our dilemma as we are looking to start the I-130 process in May. Would it be impossible for her to obtain Italian citizenship after she receives her US visa? Could she take the oath of citizenship at an Italian consulate in the US?

On the residency... how soon would her residency status expire once she enters the US?


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## BBCWatcher (Dec 28, 2012)

No, she cannot take an oath of Italian citizenship _based on continuous residence in Italy_ outside Italy. That doesn't even compute.

You can start the I-130 process as I said already, the day after you marry if you wish. That's no problem. The only time dependency on the U.S. side is that, once she has a visa in hand, she has 90 days to move. (I think it's 90 days.) But the I-130 filing is not a visa in hand. Once the I-130 is approved she can stall the National Visa Center as long as she wants/needs, as long as she contacts the NVC at least once per year to keep her file active.

She's got a _double_ problem once she moves to the U.S. if she isn't an Italian citizen by then. The clock starts on her Italian residency expiring. (How quickly it expires is situational. Her opportunity to obtain Italian citizenship critically depends on _continuous_ residence in Italy, so after 6 months or less she would wipe out all that 10+ years of residence she has now, probably never again with the chance to acquire citizenship.) If she then goes to move back to Italy to reset that clock, the clock _starts_ on losing her U.S. residency. Citizenship is the only way to abolish the Italian clock. She qualifies, and that's her first order of business. She ought to get on it, now.

Once she is an Italian citizen you then have the option, 3 years into the marriage or after she naturalizes (whichever is later), to apply to acquire Italian citizenship yourself if you wish. That's unlike U.S. citizenship which requires U.S. residence even if you're married to an American. Italy will grant its citizenship to foreign spouses of Italians no matter where you live. (The waiting period is one year longer if you live outside Italy, but that's the only difference.) That's also unlike Italian citizenship in _her_ case because she would be acquiring Italian citizenship based on her residence, not based on her marriage to an Italian citizen-spouse. Unless she's planning to marry somebody else. 

To net it out, it's in your _mutual_ interest she get her Italian citizenship safely secured, now, before moving to the U.S. It will be difficult or impossible for her (and you) to return to Italy or elsewhere in Europe unless she gets that done.

She's got one thing to do, NOW: get enrolled in the integration class scheduled soonest. The integration class is a prerequisite to naturalization.


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## BBCWatcher (Dec 28, 2012)

As a follow-up, she would enroll in a "percorso di cittadinanza" -- that's the term of art. She had the opportunity to enroll in such a course with as few as 8 years of legal continuous residence in Italy, so she's already late.


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## Khylelund (Oct 11, 2014)

BBCWatcher said:


> You can start the I-130 process as I said already, the day after you marry if you wish. That's no problem. The only time dependency on the U.S. side is that, once she has a visa in hand, she has 90 days to move. (I think it's 90 days.) But the I-130 filing is not a visa in hand. Once the I-130 is approved she can stall the National Visa Center as long as she wants/needs, as long as she contacts the NVC at least once per year to keep her file active.


I believe with the I-130 visa she would have 6 months to enter the US otherwise the visa would expire and we would have to start entire the process all over again.



> She's got a _double_ problem once she moves to the U.S. if she isn't an Italian citizen by then. The clock starts on her Italian residency expiring. (How quickly it expires is situational. Her opportunity to obtain Italian citizenship critically depends on _continuous_ residence in Italy, so after 6 months or less she would wipe out all that 10+ years of residence she has now, probably never again with the chance to acquire citizenship.) If she then goes to move back to Italy to reset that clock, the clock _starts_ on losing her U.S. residency. Citizenship is the only way to abolish the Italian clock. She qualifies, and that's her first order of business. She ought to get on it, now.


I need to find out from her on the exact stipulations of her Italian residency. Our long term goal is to have her move to the US. We were looking at moving back to Italy as a retirement option, but that would be many years from. Another option we were thinking of is that she is a Serbian national... once Serbia eventually becomes a member of the EU and Serbian citizens acquire the same freedom of movement rights as other EU citizens within the EU, she could return to Italy.




> Once she is an Italian citizen you then have the option, 3 years into the marriage or after she naturalizes (whichever is later), to apply to acquire Italian citizenship yourself if you wish. That's unlike U.S. citizenship which requires U.S. residence even if you're married to an American. Italy will grant its citizenship to foreign spouses of Italians no matter where you live. (The waiting period is one year longer if you live outside Italy, but that's the only difference.) That's also unlike Italian citizenship in _her_ case because she would be acquiring Italian citizenship based on her residence, not based on her marriage to an Italian citizen-spouse. Unless she's planning to marry somebody else.


LOL, we're trying to make this _less_ complicated. 



> To net it out, it's in your _mutual_ interest she get her Italian citizenship safely secured, now, before moving to the U.S. It will be difficult or impossible for her (and you) to return to Italy or elsewhere in Europe unless she gets that done.
> 
> She's got one thing to do, NOW: get enrolled in the integration class scheduled soonest. The integration class is a prerequisite to naturalization.


How long is the entire Italian citizenship process if she starts now? She mentioned that the Italian citizenship process would take four years. 
On the I-130 visa, we're looking at it taking 6 months for her to acquire the visa from the date we would file in May.


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## BBCWatcher (Dec 28, 2012)

Four years is unrealistically too long. I don't know where she got that information.

The earliest Serbia would join the EU is 2020, but even that date is looking unrealistic now. Then there would be an additional 7 years before Serbian citizens would have freedom of movement rights in the EU, assuming Serbia fares no worse than Bulgaria and Romania. (It might fare worse.)

This is all repetitive information, by the way -- we've been through this discussion already in another thread.


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