FBI Clearance in Citizenship Processes

A number of citizenship processes require a certificate of good conduct that one does not have a criminal record in another country. Within the US this is generally an FBI Identify and History Summary Check (IdHSC). One can have the FBI IdHSC within a day, it is not a complex process.

One starts by applying at the FBI IdHSC page and you get back a file number immediately. You give the file number to the Post Office when they take your fingerprints. Not all US Post Offices have the needed equipment, check at the USPS IdentityCapture page to find the nearest office which does. The post office charges $50 to take the fingerprints, but submits them digitally and you get the result in an email from the FBI within hours.

We printed the PDF file we received from the FBI to mail to the Bundesverwaltungsamt (BVA) in Germany. It does not need Apostille.

In terms of timelines: we got a request for the FBI clearances when the caseworker began looking at our file. The letter with our FBI papers arrived in Köln Oct 10, 2023, the BVA accepted the declaration November 15, 2023. The Consulate informed us that they had the Urkunde ready for pickup Nov 29, 2023.

German Mother Pathways to Citizenship

My mother was German, am I a German citizen?

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That depends on when you were born a whether your parents were married. It notably does not depend on where you were born, whether in Germany or not.

1. If your parents were not married and never married: German mothers have always passed on German citizenship to children born out of wedlock.
    
   This question commonly comes up in the context of a German mother who moved to the US, it matters how old you were and whether you were a minor when she did so. In the US naturalization process, minors naturalize automatically without anyone making the conscious choice that they should naturalize. This means that though the parent forfeits their German citizenship, the minor child does not. If this is your situation you likely remain a German citizen to this day.


2. If your parents were married at the time of your birth: German mothers did not pass on German citizenship to children born in wedlock before 1/1/1975, but German fathers did. If your parents were married at the time of your birth, then you were not born a German citizen. However the modern state of Germany has decided that this gender discriminatory policy was unconstitutional, and defined a declaration process called Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz § 5 (StAG5) by which descendants of such persons can declare their German citizenship, which you would be eligible for.


3. If your parents were not married at the time of your birth but later married: you were born a German citizen, but that citizenship was revoked upon their marriage as your birth was legitimized and treated as though they had been married. HOWEVER, a 2006 court case in Germany reversed this revocation upon legitimization for children born after 1953 when a relevant law went into effect. Retroactively, such children are considered to have been German citizens for their entire lives.

Probers for SSL Certificate Validity

On services I run, I make sure that we have a prober to check how long the site's certificate has remaining to allow AlertManager rules to be written if it is getting close.

Hey LabCorp hit me up, we should talk.