citizenship

Playing the Migration Game

Playing the Migration Game

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

The title of this post probably sounds metaphorical, but it isn’t. I really did spend Monday to Friday last week in Berlin, playing a game that could perhaps best be described as a cross between Capture the Flag, Dungeons and Dragons, and Model United Nations.

How did this come about? A bit randomly, as these things do. I quit my job last summer, and in the intervening months have been doing a combination of work on Hiraeth, web design and marketing for Tony’s new business, freelance projects, taking the Dutch classes I’ve been putting off so long, and brushing up on my reading skills in Latin and Arabic for grad school.… Read more

Brexit and Me

Brexit and Me

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Happy Brexit week! Hahahahaha. Just kidding. Don’t throw anything at me. Anyway, I guess we may get a bit of a reprieve, if that march yesterday is any indication. Hurrah for drawing this whole thing out even more. Not. A few weeks ago, Dutch News (local English-language news podcast and website) launched a cosy little series called ‘Brexit and me‘, where people could share their feelings and contingency plans in the run-up to Brexit. British people mostly, of course, since they are the people around here who are in general most directly affected by their country’s imminent retreat from Everyone Else.… Read more

A Long-Held Dream

A Long-Held Dream

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Eighteen years ago I graduated from university. I had been thinking about grad school for years already by then, but looking back I realise I never considered it a real option for me. My parents had been fully supportive of me getting a bachelor’s degree, but as devout, traditional Mormons, their script for their oldest daughter after university continued in a fixed path towards mission, marriage and motherhood. Not all Mormons uniformly believe this way (and some are much more extreme, as Tara Westover recounts in her riveting memoir, Educated), but my parents did, and for them it was core to their faith.… Read more

A Little Update on Italian Citizenship

A Little Update on Italian Citizenship

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Well, the road to true love never did run smooth. Which is the ongoing refrain of this decade-long quest for Italian citizenship. As I mentioned several weeks ago, I did submit all my documents using the Italian Ministry of the Interior’s online application process. Not having heard from them in a while, and being concerned about the six month document expiration rule I mentioned before, I emailed the extremely helpful Adrianus at the consulate, and politely asked how things were going. 

He presented me with the unfortunate news that as well as a criminal report from the FBI, I needed to submit one from my US state of residence.… Read more

Things I Have Worried About While Applying for Italian Citizenship

Things I Have Worried About While Applying for Italian Citizenship

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Almost ten years ago we moved to Italy specifically for the purpose of claiming Italian citizenship for Tony via a process called jure sanguinis (by right of blood). In fact, that was the impetus for starting this blog in the first place: recording all the wacky and frustrating and occasionally miraculous things that happened along the way.

Several months, dozens of official stamps and seals, and many scoops of stress gelato later, Tony and the kids officially had their Italian citizenship recognised. And I was immediately eligible to apply for Italian citizenship myself as the wife of a bona fide Italian.… Read more

Italian Citizenship 2.0

Italian Citizenship 2.0

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I thought I was all done writing about getting Italian citizenship on this blog. But of course I’m not, because even though I did most of the work for the rest of the Familia, who are lucky Italians-by-birth, to get their Italian passports, I don’t have a single Italian ancestor. I know this because for Mormons genealogy is a religious imperative, and members of my family have been tracing our roots back to the Middle Ages since before I was born.… Read more

And now you know . . . the rest of the story.

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I hope you enjoyed our little jaunt to the Philippines yesterday. Now back to Italy. We had decided to move to Italy by October 2007, which at the time was one year away. Now all we needed to do was to collect birth, death, and marriage certificates for Tony and all his ancestors in a direct line back to Domenico. It came to a grand total of 32 certificates, plus the Naturalization papers for Domenico. The documents had to be requested from the vital records offices of five different states and two different towns in Italy, and then most of them had to be sent to the Governor’s office of the various states for an Apostille.… Read more

Another Angle

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

If you’ve missed the beginning of this story, I’m telling about how we moved to Italy. The rest of the story can be found here:


Since Grandma Familia had been a good source of information about her side of the family, Tony decided to call his mother and see if she knew anything about whether and when Domenico was naturalized. As fate would have it, she had recently paid a visit to her uncle Blaine (Domenico’s grandson and the genealogy guru of the family). With her sisters, she had been able to see his store of genealogical documents.… Read more

Welcome to the Famiglia

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Lately we’ve been talking about the new Rome L.D.S. Temple and why it is important to my family. If you missed the first two posts in this series, here they are:

Rome Temple Groundbreaking
The Story Begins . . .

When Tony and I got married, one of his aunts gave me a set of pasta dishes, along with Tony’s grandmother’s recipe for Chicken Parmagiana. “Welcome to the Famiglia,” began the recipe. I didn’t really understand back then everything it meant to become part of this family.

After our wedding, Tony and I went back to Utah and B.Y.U., where he busied himself finishing a business degree and I went to work at an immigration law office.… Read more

In Memoriam

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We found out when we arrived that Gianfranco, the man who worked at the Comune and helped Tony to get his citizenship two years ago, passed away three weeks ago. We were saddened to hear of his passing and wish peace and consolation for his family. … Read more