Acquiring Polish Citizenship By Virtue Of Law

According to Article 14 of the Act on Polish Citizenship, a child acquire the Polish citizenship by birth if at least one of the parents is the Polish citizen. As a consequence of this provision, there are many people all over the world who, pursuant to the Polish law, are the Polish citizens, but in most cases they are not aware of that.

Confirmation Of Polish Citizenship

If someone has Polish roots, the easiest way to get the Polish passport is the procedure of Polish citizenship confirmation determined in Chapter 7 of the Act on Polish Citizenship. In order to complete it, it is required to prove that at least one of the ancestors had the Polish citizenship in the moment of their child birth. Not necessarily it has to be the parent – more distant ancestors are also possible. Even if the last person who had the Polish citizenship was great grandfather, his child – grandfather, in the moment of his birth also acquired the Polish citizenship. With the grandfather’s children it is the same, etc. There is a kind of chain – every subsequent child acquires Polish citizenship by virtue of law, because that child is a child of the Polish citizen.

More To Past, More Difficult

With tries to confirm the Polish citizenship on the basis of the ancestors’ citizenship from many years ago, there might be some proof problems. If the ancestors were born before Poland regained its independence, it can be difficult to prove that they acquired the Polish citizenship. Even if that was the case, it is also important to check whether nothing happened causing losing the Polish citizenship by them (for example acquiring citizenship of another country). Proving that the ancestor is actually the ancestor of the petitioner can also be problematic. Old documents are often not available (because they were destroyed during the war etc.) or there are discrepancies making determination of the above citizenship chain more difficult.