Dual Citizenship in Italy?
In all of my blogging about travel, there’s one BIG item I haven’t talked about much, because it was too soon. Here it is: We’re trying to get US/Italian dual citizenship. After bouncing around Europe for a year, we’re now in Italy, working on that.
Why?
As readers of this blog know, we decided to sell it all to be digital nomads, for a minimum of “a few years,” maybe more.
Apart from the excitement of travel and adventure for our family, we desire to learn other languages and cultures. We wanted to show Kamea that there is a great big world out there. We want her to bi- (or tri-) lingual to help her future. We want her to learn how other cultures live. Not everything is “supersized” and SUV in the world.
Travel Visas
As we started planning our new life, we had to consider tourist visas to determine how long we could stay in any given country. Most countries impose a limit on how long you can stay.
Europe presented a special situation, in that we could only stay in the “Schengen Area” (26 EU countries with unrestricted travel between them) for a max of only 90 days out of every 180 days. Meaning, at 90 days, you must leave the area for 3 months before you can return.
But that doesn’t mean you have to leave Europe. There are a handful of European countries that are not in the Schengen Area… notably the UK, Ireland, and a few eastern European countries.
How to Live in Europe Year Round
We could have applied for a long-term visa, but that didn’t fit our situation very well. Another way to live in Europe year-round is to transit in and out of the Schengen Area every 90 days. (So, 90 days in and 90 days out. Rinse and repeat. For many people, that means staying in the popular countries like France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc. — and then heading to Eastern Europe or the UK for the other 90 days.)
That’s great and it can be done, but it requires a lot of moving around, which is disruptive and can be expensive.
But then, I guess as the “nomad” moniker implies constant movement. Frequent disruption comes with the territory.
But sometimes you just want to stay put for a while. Staying longer means better deals when renting apartments, creating meaningful relationships with locals, and deeper immersion for learning languages.
Were there other options?
Yes.
Things got interesting when Italian dual citizenship came on our radar.
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