Anyone who is a descendant of a Polish citizen may be eligible to obtain Polish citizenship.
“There may be millions of people around the world who don’t know that they could apply for Polish citizenship,” explained Michael Decker, founding partner at Decker, Pex, Levi. “There are also probably millions around the world who won’t meet the conditions and requirements.”
To obtain Polish citizenship today, applicants must prove their ancestry by providing a series of documents—many of which people often don’t have.
“We have clients in the US whose ancestors migrated through Israel before moving to the United States. We would need to prove, for example, that they didn’t serve in the Israeli IDF,” Decker said. “Therefore, you need someone here on the ground to contact the IDF and obtain confirmation that there was no army service.”
“You don’t want to make mistakes, and you want to submit a strong application. Therefore, I think it’s definitely advisable to use a lawyer in this process,” he said, although he noted that legal representation is not mandatory.
“There is a lot of bureaucracy,” Decker added.