Mei-Lin’s Italian Citizenship Application Checklist

A couple of days ago I managed to go AGAIN through the Asylum’s Telephonic Hades System and I got some clarifications regarding Mei-Lin’s quest for Italian citizenship. Remember we need Mei-Lin’s birth certificate and police records from Taiwan and Japan.

Regarding her birth certificate from Taiwan, the procedure is a bit different from the usual drill we need to do for documents requested by Swiss authorities. This is because Italian authorities only want documents in Italian, and only accept accredited sworn translators. AYFKM? So this is what we have to do:

1. Obtain original certificate (in Chinese) from Taileng’s Household Registration Office.
2. Have a recognized notary legalize this document. The Italian Consulate Trade Office in Taipei sent us a list of these notaries, who are recognized both by the Taiwanese MOFA and the Italian authority, we need to take an appointment with one of them.
3. Not sure whether this step is necessary, probably not, but it might be also necessary to do the double-legalization at the MOFA. 90% sure this won’t be necessary though. Confirmed, it’s not necessary.
4. Send the legalized document (or hand in person) to the Italian Consulate Trade Office in Taipei, and have them legalize it as well!
5. Notice that, so far, the document is in Chinese, and the Italian Consulate Trade Office in Taipei does not perform translations. We have to bring the documents to Switzerland and have it translated to Italian by a recognized sworn translator (actually, they recommended to do it in Italy via registered post because it’s cheaper). The translation must be attached and stamped to the original document. UPDATE 2023-11-09: apparently, this is not entirely true.

Since we are already going to Taiwan in person to take care of Penelope’s birth certificate for the Swiss Family Book we will do all these things together in October, and then we’ll do the translation when we’re back. Just to be clear: we go to Taiwan also for other reasons, so I’m not gonna add the shamefully expensive plane tickets to the bureaucracy cost.

For the police record in Taiwan it’s a similar procedure, just we have to:

1. Request the certificate from the police station, and it comes already pretranslated to many languages BUT not Italian.
2. Have it legalized by one of the recognized notaries above (and maybe by the MOFA).
3. Send the legalized document (or hand in person) to the Italian Consulate Trade Office in Taipei, and have them legalize it as well.
4. Have it translated to Italian by a sworn translator in Italy or Switzerland, as above (we will do it in batch with the birth certificate).

For the Japanese police record… that’s different.

This is because Japan is one of the many signatory countries of the Hague Convention of 1961. I even found out there is an Italian official document unironically called SUPERTABELLA (“super-table”) which lists which countries adhere to which convention in terms of legal document recognition. In theory, this simplifies our life, because instead of a double-legalization, all is necessary is an Apostille (an official stamp) which can be done by any Prefecture.

In practice, theory and practice are not the same. Here is what we have to do:

1. Book an in-person appointment with the Japanese Embassy in Bern specifying what we need to do (we have already done this and have an appointment in the following days).
2. The day of the appointment, we need to go there at 11:00 (they have standard times for this), show ID and other relevant documents, provide a pre-stamped return envelope, pay, and then receive a request order. Important to specify to them that we need the apostille as well!
3. With this request, go to a local police station in Bern at 13:00 (the appointment is booked by the Japanese embassy for us), present the request, and let them take Mei-Lin’s fingerprints. They will give us a confirmation.
4. Bring back again this confirmation at the Japanese Embassy, then go back home.
5. The Japanese Embassy will forward the request to the relevant police station in Japan, which will then release a police record certificate (in many laguages but NOT Italian) and send it to the Japanese Embassy in Bern, which will then apostille it and send back to us with the prestamped envelope.
6. At this point, again, we will need to have it translated by a sworn translator in Italy or Switzerland.

We have the appointment in Bern in a couple of weeks. ETA for this process: 2 months. AYFKM.