Polish citizenship and passport
Our company represents clients from all over the world who, as Polish emigrants or their descendents, are interested in confirmation of their Polish citizenship. The majority of people who want to initiate a proper procedure, unfamiliar with the course of proceedings and often not even certain about their own legal status and how high the likelihood of satisfactory conclusion is, direct the first steps towards diplomatic agencies or to foreign legal offices.
Meanwhile, the entire procedure notwithstanding needs to be conducted before the offices in Poland – embassies only accept the applications which are consequently sent to Poland. Diplomatic agencies do not have any control over the course of procedure and their role is reduced to formal reception of the application. Thus, they do not offer a particular legal assistance, meeting deadline requirements and additional legal advice in the cases where difficulties arise. In the embassies, moreover, very frequently the number of persons interested in obtaining information about the procedure and the shortage of administration staff in charge of the procedure exclude a short response time and result in the necessity of bearing extensive costs of time accrued by the applicants. The choice of foreign law office, on the other hand, involves very considerable financial expenditure. And one must bear in mind that these offices, or advocates as opposed to ours, are generally not specialized in this field. The experience of CK Law Office lawyers’ team and a very high ratio of positively resolved cases constitute the best guarantee for our clients.
Being in direct contact with the client - the person who grants us their proxy is at all times updated on the progress or any encountered difficulties by the lawyer dealing with a given case, who can be contacted at any moment when questions arise. Emphasizing the specialization guarantees the level of legal assistance which cannot be ensured by large foreign legal offices and concentrating activities in Poland lowers the costs, which makes our offer very attractive in terms of pricing.
Polish citizenship - information and requirements
In this section, upon selecting given options in side menu, you will also obtain a lot of additional information on the way of handling cases and on the benefits which at present result from Polish citizenship - which is correlated with EU citizenship.
The procedure of certification of Polish citizenship concerns persons who left the territories of Poland in the 20th century and until a certain point were convinced they had lost it. However, in many cases, such situations took place with a breach of Polish law, as a result of which emigrants, although themselves unaware of it, continued to be citizens of Poland.
CK Law Office also provides legal assistance for those who are interested in acquisition of Polish citizenship and Polish passport.
On estimating emigration statistics, it becomes remarkable that one third of Polish citizens (which means: over 20 million people) live outside Poland. Three countries in the world – Russia, China and Italy – are ahead of us with regard to the absolute number of emigrants. One is authorized to apply for a confirmation of Polish citizenship when being a former inhabitant of Polish territory, including Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, who was born there in the period between World Wars, which means, during the time when these lands belonged to Poland.
Apart from the abovementioned, this can be done by their descendents – one need to keep in mind that in Polish law the ‘’blood principle’’ (ius sanguinis) , concerning the inheritance of citizenship, is in effect. A citizen of Poland is one of whom a minimum of one parent holds citizenship. The place of birth is not relevant.
Polish Citizenship through ancestry
The ’’number of generations’’ has no significance either – among the persons whose cases were handled by our employees, there could be found citizens of the USA, South American countries, Israel and Australia, whose grandparents had left Poland in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century.
One must remember, though, that individual approach is required in case of those emigrants (or their descendents) who left Poland in the period between Jan 31, 1920 and Jan 19, 1951. In these cases, it is necessary to precisely verify the age of persons who left, any facts connected with contracted marriages, or even details concerning further life outside the territory of Poland (e.g. military service), which could have had direct influence on the loss of Polish citizenship by an emigrant, which obviously had implications for the descendants’ legal status.
Many people interested in certification of Polish citizenship and living beyond the Polish borders believe (information obtained from friends or read on various types of internet forums or webpages) that the procedure involves the participation of a Polish diplomatic agency. This information is incorrect – the whole procedure takes place before appropriate offices (or, in some cases, before administrative courts) in Poland. The application is submitted to the office of a governor of province, depending on the last legal domicile – and in case of persons never inhabiting the territory of the country – to the office of Governor of Mazowieckie. The obtained decision qualifies as an administrative decision.
The set of documents required from an applicant may differ in particular cases depending on actual situation – we present in details the scope of demanded documents during the initial analysis of each case. Applicants do not need to know the Polish language or be familiar with the Polish culture. Similarly, they do not have to pass any specific tests. Upon acquisition of Polish citizenship, they may immediately apply for the Polish ID card and Polish passport.