I received this email the other day from the citizenship officer of my embassy:

Riscontro la sua cortese lettera on-line per informarla che e impossibile
valutare la correttezza della procedura di acquisizione della cittadinanza
italiana senza i documenti necessari, i quali, nel suo caso, partono gia
storti nelle generalita del nonno straniero. Il che, tuttavia, non significa
necessariamente che la richiesta non possa essere accolta, ma e certamente
molto improbabile accettare le gravi differenze sia dei nomi sia dei cognomi
di cui si parla; oltre a cio, la persona di cittadinanza italiana e di sesso
femminile, e purtroppo, a quei tempi lontani, la donna aveva ben poche
occasioni di trasmettere il proprio status civitatis italiano alla propria
discendenza.

Sarebbe pertanto opportuno che lei venga a farci visita presso questa
Cancelleria consolare per poter visionare le sue carte.


But there's something strange about it. Here's the back story:

The email he's (finally) replying to was sent over 2 months ago and it was a question about a misspelling of my grandfather's name. When I didn't a reply in a timely manner, I decided to get my documents translated anyway and apply hoping the citizenship officer wouldn't notice the mistake because it's hard to spot. So Tuesday I turned in all my papers and didn't mention either the email or the misspelling, or anything else for that matter.

Then Thursday that email arrives. Um... he's asking me to come so he can see my papers, right? He HAS my papers. Does he think the recipient of this email and the person who was in his office are 2 different people? Despite our same name and Italian line of decent...?

People tell me to talk to him to clear it up, but if he really is this thick then there is a good chance he will miss the spelling mistake saving me a lot of legal hoo-haa changing a 90 year old birth certificate. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by pointing it out.

This is not a busy embassy and according to him only a few people a year apply for citizenship so... erm...

How odd and a tough call. Particularly if you aren't in a major hurry to get the citizenship processed, I would personally lay low for now and then check up in a couple weeks/months on the progress (did they give you a time frame when you handed in the docs?).

In my situation, I handed everything in with nothing said about problems. Then a few months later, they contacted me about a discrepancy. As I worked to fix it, I was making zero headway and getting very discouraged, but then about 2 months later, my father received a letter that the documents had been accepted and were being sent to Italy. I don't really know why there was no problem, then a problem, then no problem again, but I don't particularly care either, and just feel lucky.

Hopefully you'll have the same experience

It's possible he didn't connect you on Tues with you the emailer. Considering how screwy email can be some times it's even possible he sent the email before Tuesday You might want to check the email headers to see when it was sent.

I'm willing to bet that Nick's right - he probably doesn't realize that the person who e-mailed him is the same person who came in and applied for citizenship. I'll be wishing you the best of luck my dear!