Experiences with the Latvian citizenship by descent application process
I’ve been going through the Latvian citizenship by descent application for a few months now, and honestly I’m starting to get a bit lost in the whole document-chasing part. I thought I had everything sorted, but then the archive wrote back asking for more details about my great-grandfather’s place of residence before 1940. Has anyone here gone through something similar? I’m trying to understand whether these follow-up questions are normal or if I missed something important at the beginning.
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Yeah, that sounds familiar, and honestly you shouldn’t stress too much about it. When I started my own application, I also thought I had the whole file ready—birth records, old family passports, even a photo of my great-grandmother at a church in Jelgava that I thought would help somehow. But after submitting everything through latvian passport the specialists explained that the archives routinely ask for clarifications, especially if someone moved around or the spelling of names changed over time. In my case, they wanted confirmation that one of my relatives actually lived in Latvia before the occupation because the original town record didn’t have his full patronymic. It took another month of back-and-forth emailing, but eventually it all worked out. If you already have a response from the archive, that usually means they’ve located something and just want to make sure it matches your family line. My advice is to answer as specifically as you can, even if it feels redundant. It speeds things up more than you'd expect.