Only grandmother, not grandfather? 'Cuz if Granddad counts too, I’m in.
Grandmother is specifically stated for this relatively new path, because apparently females were historically discriminated against regarding passing citizenship to their children.
That doesn’t rule out a grandfather path; I have not researched that mechanism; there may be a way for you.
Thanks for the prompt response. I’ll dig into that.
A few years ago, one of my cousins gave serious consideration to emigrating to Hungary.Our grandparents were born there, and the government was willing to grant citizenship to foreigners who could prove their ancestry. She wasn’t particularly interested in living there, but figured she could use the EU travel privileges to find a more appealing country.
I have the one remaining original document that is iron-clad proof of our ancestry - our grandmother’s disintegrating birth certificate - and offered to help figure out the red tape.
Turned out in addition to having a working knowledge of reading, writing and speaking Hungarian, applicants were expected to pony up an entrance fee of $100,000 US. My cousin rapidly lost interest.
My cousin’s children went through this a few years ago. My cousin speaks fluent Hungarian, which helped a lot, but even then it was a tough process.
I have an internet friend who is Irish, married a Hungarian, and they both live there. He is reasonably adequate in Hungarian, but he did not seem to have issues in getting resident status.
Ireland and Hungary are both in the EU.
Being married to somebody from [wherever] greatly simplifies somebody from [elsewhere] getting resident status in [wherever]. That’s pretty universal around the world. Even easier if of both are already EU, but that’s not a hard requirement.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you are eligible for Hungarian citizenship by descent, there is no $100,000 fee.
I researched this option pretty extensively a few years back (having the family roots and language background) and read the accounts of several people who acquired Hungarian citizenship this way. Such a fee was not mentioned.
A quick online search seems to confirm my recollections. I see references to some program by which foreign investors can drop $250,000 and get long-term residence, but that’s different.
Just as a practical matter, if Hungary were charging ethnic Hungarians $100,000 for a passport, the ones who needed it couldn’t afford it, and the few who could afford it wouldn’t need it.
I know nothing about EU, but generally aren’t spouse visas separate critters?
Having a spouse visa makes it much easier to get permanent residency both in Japan and Taiwan, the two countries I’m most familiar with.
You’re more expert than I. But my point is the same as yours: spouse visas, or whatever any local country calls their spouse-residency document, are pretty much automatic. At least assuming the other spouse is a proper citizen of that country.
The EU is a separate issue. As a general matter, any EU citizen can live and work in any other EU country. No visas, no spouses, none of that stuff matters. If you’re an EU citizen you’re almost, not quite, a citizen of every EU country. You’ve certainly got the equivalent of permanent resident status and a permanent worker visa in every EU country.
The post upthread mentioned having no immigration issues between an Irish person who was / is married to a Hungarian person. That’s not surprising. Due to both being EU citizens. It’s also an anecdote that’s utterly irrelevant to those of us who aren’t already EU citizens.
The issue is whether having a Hungarian grandmother or whatever qualifies someone for citizenship by birth, or whether it qualifies them for some kind of visa. If the former, I would be a bit surprised—but not shocked given that Hungary seems to actually be a template for some of the god awful things Trump wants to do, and that includes making (in our case English) a national language and limiting birthright citizenship—if speaking Hungarian or paying $100,000 was a requirement. If the latter, then both requirements seem quite a bit more plausible.
Anyway, I’m glad @Kent_Clark’s cousin is at least cognizant of the political climate in Hungary and would expect to live elsewhere in Europe if granted citizenship. Otherwise, it would seem a bit out of the frying pan and into the fire to me.
But then again, the popular conception of immigrating elsewhere always seems like that’s a risk to me. Immigrating to the UK, for example. The sort of anti-speech laws I am afraid of the right trying to push in the US? They already exist in the UK: there is no first amendment and so people are being arrested and face possible incarceration for merely expressing support for certain Palestinian groups. Likewise, I believe transphobia is actually pretty extensive there—arguably even moreso than in the US. Anti-immigrant sentiment? Check. Worse, they literally have a state church and a hereditary monarch on top of that. I don’t care how ceremonial either are, it’s the principle of the thing to me.
I don’t want to bash the UK, and I am sure that in some ways life in the UK would be a genuine improvement (fewer guns, for one), but they certainly aren’t free from the growing tide of reactionary movements. Nor, I think, is anywhere else in Europe at the moment. So personally, I’d be wary about immigrating anywhere. Especially since that would make me, well, an immigrant: and even if things aren’t so bad for native born citizens in these other countries, being an immigrant might just tip the balance towards life being measurably worse.
The flip side of that is also true: emigrating might make things better, and staying might make things worse. It really depends. My experience emigrating to Canada has been really positive overall.
Britain was also an option (my husband is British), and Britain does suffer from the same issue as the US: a terrible right-wing party and an ineffectual centrist party. Overall, though, I would just say the balance of liberties is different. America imposes lots of restrictions, just not on speech or guns, And you’re used to them. In the UK, there is more freedom of movement (in practical terms: better trains, smaller country, closer to other countries) and freedom of access to health care is not to be sneezed at.
It’ll be interesting to see statistics on how many Americans actually flee into the presumably 
open arms of other countries.
I suspect the percentage will be similar to that of the wealthy folk predicted to flee NYC under the new mayor. Past predictions of moneyed folk escaping places with higher taxes haven’t come to pass, largely for the same reasons that left-of-center mass emigrations haven’t occurred - home is where family, friends and connections are, on top of reassuringly familiar surroundings.
It helps that a significant percentage of New York’s moneyed elite consists of lawyers, for whom it’s a real pain logistically to set up shop in a different state.
Just paying rent usually isn’t enough, as most rent control ( or stabilization) laws require the apartment to be your primary residence. I couldn’t get a real sense from the article about how how long they left San Francisco at a stretch - if they spend two months away from the apartment at a time, people do leave temporarily for that amount of time for all sorts of reasons. Even if they did leave for long periods of time, they won’t lose the apartment unless the landlord knows it’s not their primary residence. And the neighbors/super may help keep that information from the landlord.
Which country a person wants to go to is going to make a huge difference - a co-worker of mine retired to Thailand. He said he needed either $25K in a bank account or a monthly income of $2K - and that was pretty much it , although the requirements may have been different if he intended to work.
I hear there are handy phrasebooks.
I am not sure if this was posted already here or in another thread, but good reading on the topic:
Takeaways: Even with money, it’s not easy to acclimate, and lack of local contacts made every day a struggle…
Yes, that article about the American couple who returned to the US after a failed attempt at moving to France was posted upthread by me. I think in post 11. I’m still pissed off that they were able to retain a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco.
Oops - sorry about the repost - I should have searched better.