Get her naturalized? I don’t know; it’s going to be messy, because I don’t know if it’s possible to get around the illegal voting issue of all things. Criminal convicitons, maybe; voting, there is no waiver for (or at least my boss, the immigraiton attorney, tells me). It seriously might take an act of Congress to get her naturalized.
Besides, we know her mother lived in the U.S. for a number of years before moving to Canada, so it’s very possible she was a U.S. citizen. (Most people back then naturalized as soon as they were legally able.) It’s even possible she filed for naturalization on my grandmother’s behalf; my grandmother was still under 18 when she moved to the U.S. But I can’t find out any of that without investigating the family history; derivative citizenship is inextricably tied to fact patterns of marriage and parentage.
Right. I guess I’m confused, then. Does the great aunt object even to finding out if your great-grandmother was a U.S. citizen? My major point was that it’s probably not necessary to dredge up deep dark secrets about Great Aunt’s parentage or other such scandalous skeletons in the closet in order to prove Great-Grandma’s U.S. citizenship. Maybe Great Aunt wouldn’t care if you explained to her that you’d limit your research to this narrow issue to help Grandma, if you decide it would be worthwhile. With your stated suspicions about Great Aunt’s parentage, I guess I assumed the objections were to you casting a wide net and learning as much as possible about their family.
And I’m definitely no immigration lawyer; I was going on your summary of your research into immigration law, which sounded to me as though you thought Grandma might qualify for some kind of waiver rather easily, despite the voting issue. Apparently I misunderstood.
Does your boss the immigration lawyer have any opinion about what would be the best course of action for your Grandma?
My great-aunt objects to me finding anything at all. I suspect that if I find out anything involving great-grandmother’s immigration status, it will include info on her marital history and children as well.
When I told my boss this story, basically it gave her a headache. We don’t do much in the way of naturalization or derivative citizenship, and at this point her citizenship would be governed by old laws which were subsumed decades ago. Hell, it even gave the now-retired Managing Partner a headache, and he’s a national authority on immigration law.