What is a Slovak Living Abroad Certificate, how do you get one, and most importantly,
what benefits does it have? Those are all good questions. I'm going to answer those
questions in this video. So first of all, backing up, my name is Parviz Malakouti-Fitzgerald.
I am an immigration attorney and I'm also the admin of the Facebook group, Slovak Living
Abroad Certificate & Slovak Citizenship. In that group, we talk about how you get a Slovak
Living Abroad Certificate for descendants of Slovak and Czechoslovak citizens. And we
also speak about new updates with regards to the Slovak citizenship by descent provisions.
If you want to join that group, you're welcome to. The link is in the video description below.
So now, getting back to Slovak Living Abroad Certificate, this is a question that I see
all the time. I've probably been asked literally over 100 times, what are the benefits of a
Solak Living Abroad Certificate? How do you get one? What is it exactly? So in this video,
I wanted to explain exactly what that is. A Slovak Living Abroad Certificate is a pseudo-citizenship.
It's kind of like a level below citizenship that Slovakia gives to the descendants of
Slovak and Czechoslovak citizens who are abroad, who are not in Slovakia.
Now, what do I mean when I say a pseudo-citizenship? You don't get a passport with a Slovak Living
Abroad Certificate. What you get with it is the ability to live, work, open a business,
or study in Slovakia indefinitely. So it's kind of like a green card, a permanent green
card, although it's not a residence permit itself. What a Slovak Living Abroad Certificate
does is it gives the holder, the recipient, the ability to apply for a residence permit
and then stay in Slovakia indefinitely. If that holder of the Slovak Living Abroad Certificate
stays in Slovakia for three years, if they have three years of residence, they can apply
to naturalize after three years, which is much shorter than the regular route.
Physically, it looks like a card. It's actually a physical card that's a little bit bigger
than a driver's license. And aside from the benefits that it gives to somebody of Slovak
descent, it's a cool thing to have. If you're a Slovak descendant, if you're into your Slovak
identity, it might be a cool thing for you to get a Slovak Living Abroad Certificate.
So that's what it is. That's how it benefits you.
Now, who qualifies and how do you get a Slovak Living Abroad Certificate? So a Slovak Living
Abroad Certificate is available to the descendant of anybody who was basically a citizen of
what's modern day Slovakia. There's no generational limit on how far your relation is to the ancestor
that actually lived in Slovakia. So it could have been your father, your great-grandfather,
your grandfather, or maybe even your great-great-grandfather. But you do have to be the descendant of somebody
that was basically from Slovakia, from modern day Slovakia.
So what do you need to apply? First of all, you need to prove that chain of descent, all
the way from the qualifying family member to yourself. So let's say, for example, if
it's your great-grandfather that was born in modern day Slovakia, you need to get your
great-grandfather's birth certificate, your grandmother or grandfather's birth certificate,
then your mother or father's birth certificate, and then your birth certificate. So you need
to prove the entire chain. Now, that's not the end of it. You also need
to get each one of those birth documents apostilled. One thing that we're not really that used
to in the United States is the idea of an apostille, but it's big in Europe. Basically,
getting a document apostilled basically means that you get the government that issued that
document to certify that the person who signed the document was acting in their capacity
to sign the document. So let me give you an example. You get a birth
certificate. I was born in California, for example. If I want to get my California birth
certificate apostilled, basically I get the California birth certificate. Then I send
it back to the State of California with a request for it to be apostilled. There's instructions
for it. I'll link to those in the video description below. And the State of California basically
verifies that the person who signed my birth certificate, the registrar or whoever it may
be, had the authority to sign that birth certificate. So it's kind of an extra level of authentication.
So birth documents, getting back to our point for qualification, you need to get them and
then they need to be apostilled. And then the last thing is you need to get any documents
that are not in Slovak translated. So each one of those documents in your chain of descent,
you need to get the document, get it appstilled if it's in the United States or if it's outside
of Slovakia, and third, you need to get it translated. So that's proving the lineage.
The next requirement for the Slovak Living Abroad Certificate is that you need to show
cultural familiarity. So familiarity with the Slovak culture. It's kind of a vague standard
put forth by the government of Slovakia. Basically, the way you qualify, the way you satisfy this
requirement, is you join a Slovak cultural organization. You participate in that organization.
And then you get a letter from the Slovak cultural organization that is attesting to
your cultural familiarity. Which, in practice, means basically, yes, he's our member. He
attends, he does our events, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, one thing is, the Slovak organization that you join should be in your country. You
want it to be preferably local, if you can. But now during COVID times, a lot of activities,
most activities, have been done via Zoom or video conferencing. You want to make sure
you join a cultural organization that's in your country. If you're in the United States
or Canada, I'm going to link to some cultural organizations that would qualify below. And
you can check them out. You can see which one you want to join. And then after you've
gained enough period of time being a part of that organization and participating, you
can request from the decision maker of that organization that they provide a letter attesting
to your cultural familiarity. So that's the second requirement. First one is basically
proving the lineage. The second one is showing cultural familiarity.
The next thing is you need to show, as number three, language, familiarity with the Slovak
language. Again, this is a vague standard, maybe even more vague than actually the cultural
familiarity standard. There is no document in particular that you have to put forth.
If you've taken Slovak courses, if you've got a certification to the A1, A2, B1 level
or maybe beyond, you might want to include that. It's not absolutely necessary. But the
idea is that when you go in person to submit your Slovak Living Abroad Certificate application,
and you do have to go in person, the idea is that you're going to interact a little
bit with the consulate officer that's dealing with you. So that's the third requirement.
We said, first, proving the lineage. Secondly, the cultural familiarity requirement. And
the third, the language familiarity requirement. The next thing is you need to get an FBI background
check if you're from the United States. If you're from another country, you need to get
a similar equivalent background check. In the United States, anybody can get an FBI
background check. The way you do it is basically you find a provider of biometrics. Biometrics
means fingerprints. It can be the post office. You basically go, you get your fingerprints
taken. They get sent to the FBI. And then you get back a report with whatever your background
is. The formal term is identity summary history. I have a video on that. I'm going to link
to it right here. I'm also going to link below to the first website that you need to go to,
to get started on that process. Now, what I recommend is if you live by a
qualifying post office, there's about, I believe, a hundred post offices throughout the United
States that can take your fingerprints for the purposes of an FBI background check, I
recommend you go to one of those U.S. Postal Service offices. They're quick, they're easy.
They know what to do. And the cost for that is about, I believe it's $70 or $80 total
to get your fingerprints taken and to get the FBI background check.
The last requirement is the actual application itself. You need to fill out an application
with your biographical information. It's in Slovak. I'll also link to that below as well
in the video description. You put together all these documents when you have them. The
qualifying documents, the apostilles that are needed, the translations. And then you
contact either, if you're from the United States, if you're in the United States, using
the Slovak consultate that's in Washington D.C. or the one that's in New York and you
set up an appointment. You have to set up an appointment in advance. Right now, as of
the recording of this video, the D.C. consulate is taking appointments about six weeks out.
Obviously, by the time you're watching this video, I don't know how long that'll be. But
you need to contact them, set an appointment. And then you need to come in person to basically
submit the documentation, present your application, and then, of course, interact a little bit
in Slovak. Now, by law, they're supposed to, Slovakia
is supposed to respond and adjudicate your Slovak Living Abroad Certificate within 60
days. Whether it's going to take longer than that, possibly. The way it works basically
is that when you submit the documentation to the consulate, it gets sent to Bratislava,
to what's called the Slovak Living Abroad Office. It's actually an office that they
help with over there. Currently, the president is a very kind guy, named [inaudible 00:09:26],
who's very much into connecting with the diaspora. They adjudicate the application. And they
give you the answer. So that's it for a Slovak Living Abroad Certificate application.
If you're into this, if you're of Slovak ancestry, and there should be about at least 800,000
of you in the United States according to statistics, if you're into this, feel free to join our
Facebook group, the one that I mentioned. It's called Slovak Living Abroad Certificate
& Slovak Citizenship. Again, the link is in the video description. We have a community
together here. We love talking about these things, strategizing for the Slovak Living
Abroad Certificate, for Slovak language, culture, how to get citizenship. It's just about basically
being into your Slovak heritage and culture. So if you're into that, join our group, answer
all three questions. We'd love to hear from you.
Last thing I'll say before I let you go. When you're gathering all of this documentation,
it can be kind of difficult to keep track of all the documents. So what I recommend
you do is what I did, which is to get a really nice binder. This is a leather binder from
Amazon. It's beautiful. It actually feels good. It looks good. It kind of gets you calm
and excited to gather documents, which is otherwise like a pretty boring activity. So
I recommend you get one of these. I'll link to the Amazon product description in the video
description below. The next thing is, make sure you get some
of these plastic sleeves so you can put the documents in there. As you can see, these
are basically my documents. You can see it says apostille. That's what an apostille looks
like. And it just makes it nice and neat. It's easy to keep track of. So I recommend
you do that. And then also, if you have any questions,
if you have any issues or confusion about your genealogy, how to figure out where exactly
your ancestor was born, maybe you're not sure if they were born in the Austro-Hungarian
Empire or Czechia or Slovakia, I recommend you check out this book. It's called The Family
Tree Polish, Czech and Slovak Genealogy Guide: How to Trace Your Family Tree in Eastern Europe.
It's by Lisa Alzo, who's an amateur genealogist. She's great. She has a lot of great tips,
a lot of great information on how you can basically research your genealogy and get
those documents, which can sometimes be challenging to get. Now, I want to warn anybody who's
watching this video. It could take six months, maybe even a year, maybe even longer to track
down these documents and get them. So this is a fantastic resource. Again, I will link
to this in the video description below, so you can go right to Amazon and get it. And
that's basically it. Anybody watching this video that's going to
go on this journey, I wish you the best of luck. I hope you join the group. I hope you
join our community. And I hope, eventually, you become a Slovak living abroad. And I hope
you enjoy that status. That's it. Have a great one.