Part 8 - My Journey to Hungarian Citizenship

How my negative reaction almost ruined it all

Note: In March of 2023, I took my Hungarian Citizenship Oath. It was a lot of work and dedication to get there, and I know many others are on a similar journey through the Simplified Naturalization Procedure. I'm writing a 10-part series of posts with details of my citizenship process. I hope this will help and inspire others.

 See Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4; Part 5 ; Part 6 and Part 7.

After my interview at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, DC, I was on a high! I was proud of myself for putting in all the work to have a successful conversation with the embassy official, and happy that I had enjoyed the process too. That day, I took myself out to a fancy sushi restaurant for lunch and called many friends to celebrate my achievement.

Then, I let it all go, knowing that I had done all I could to achieve my Hungarian citizenship. It still wasn't guaranteed, but I felt optimistic.

And then, this letter arrived in the mail....

Of course, all letters from the Hungarian Government are in official, formal Hungarian. So I painstakingly read the advanced-language letter with my intermediate-language skills and was able to deduce that the government was asking for the original certified copies of my great-grandmother's Hungarian birth record and the officially translated Ukrainian notary letter (certifying that it was a true record from the archives.)

(You'll have read in part 1 of my journey that my family's village that was once in Hungary is now part of Ukraine.)

The contentment I felt about my citizenship journey went away and was replaced by frustration and anger.

I was angry, because I had tried to submit these exact documents at my first interview in Budapest, but they were given back to me.

I was frustrated because I couldn't believe I would need to do more document work, after I had already done so much to compile everything required.

These negative reactions led to a series of mistakes on my part which almost entirely sabotaged my citizenship application.

How it all started to go wrong

I reached out to the immigration consultants in Budapest who had assisted me with my original application. My contract with them included ongoing help.

(*A short aside: yes, immigration consultants or lawyers are not cheap, but this is one reason why, for me it was an excellent investment.)

Since I needed, again, to get the Ukrainian documents translated to Hungarian, the consultants suggested I send to them all the original documents. They would get them translated and submitted to the government on my behalf, using power-of-attorney.

I was delighted that they were able to help me without any delay, but nervous about sending original documents from Philadelphia to Budapest.

This fear, which is a very negative reaction, caused me to make the biggest mistake.

I had previously used DHL for sending documents to Budapest. But these were documents like my own birth certificate that I could easily get new versions of.

My great-grandmother's birth record was not something I could easily get again from Ukraine, as the country was now defending itself from a Russian invasion.

But I thought DHL would be my safest option for sending the documents safely and quickly. And for good measure, I even included the originals of my great-great grandparents' Hungarian birth records!

Sending all of these via DHL probably would have been completely fine... if not for my frustration and fear.

Rather than go to a shipping center and asking for DHL services (as I had done before without problem,) I was clouded in fear and decided, to save a bit of money, I would drive straight to the main DHL shipping center in Philadelphia - in a building way out by the airport.

Me, outside DHL - trying very hard to stay positive, but not succeeding too well! Little did I know, I was about to go inside and make a BIG mistake

This office was more accustomed to import/export businesses and people sending many boxes of goods internationally. Documents didn't seem to be their specialty.

But I was so gripped by fear, I bulldozed my way through the process, demanding extra insurance for my documents, to the clerk at DHL, who was new to the job. I said I wanted to declare that the documents were valued at $500.

These were the words I actually spoke: I'm afraid these documents will be lost, and having them insured will at least get me some financial recourse to pay someone to go to Ukraine to get new documents for me.

Yes, I said, "I'm afraid these documents will be lost."

A few days later, I received an email from the consultants in Budapest with the subject line:

Documents at Customs. The email read:

Dear Tara,

We received information from the courier that your package was delivered to the customs, and we are unable to receive it without having to declare it.

In short, the Hungarian Customs office believed my ancestors' birth records were commerical goods to be sold in Hungary, because I had valued them at $500. The government was asking the immigration consultants to pay import taxes to get the documents released from customs. And more, they wanted the immigration consultants to file paperwork to become an official import/export company! Yikes!

After many frantic calls on my part to DHL, it was finally determined that because these documents had no commercial value, it was a mistake to value them at $500 and so the package was sent as "commercial goods."

Ok, then what do I do next?

I was advised by DHL that the documents would need to be returned to me.

And this is where things got really dicey. DHL in the US reached out to their counterparts in Hungary who reached out to Hungarian Customs, but with time differences, confusion over what happened, some inexperience of people working for both DHL and customs and just general difficulty getting things like this done, it took a month... a month of me calling DHL EVERY SINGLE DAY. At one point, I was warned that the documents could be destroyed by Hungarian customs at any time.

And then, finally, a breakthrough. An email from DHL that a package would be delivered to me the next day.

I immediately responded with my preferred time when I would be home to receive the documents.

And of course, I got caught in a traffic jam, in the rain, so was not home at my preferred time.

But thankfully, my ancestors gave me a helping hand. I arrived home to find my great and great-great grandparents birth records sitting in a yellow envelope on my doorstep, in the rain, but thankfully covered in plastic.

Phew. They were safe.

But they still needed to be translated and submitted to the government.

So I took a few deep breaths. I got back into a good mindset, thanking all those involved who got these precious documents back to me. I thanked the universe for the documents not being destroyed. I got back into a positive frame of mind.

Then I got out my credit card and booked a trip to Budapest. I wouldn't let these documents out of my sight again. Instead I would hand-deliver them.

More about that in my next blog post.

But the moral the story is... the citizenship process is complicated and highly individualized. Each person's journey is unique, so it's not worth getting frustrated when asked for more documents, more clarification, another interview.... this just means that your journey is still ongoing and you are in it. Fear and frustration about it only leads to mistakes and mishaps. Re-framing the issue when things go wrong is the only way to stay the course to success.

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**At the time of writing this blog post, the invasion of Ukraine by Putin's Russia is still ongoing and has been for over three years. Ukrainians need our support. Two excellent organizations I have given to are Doctors Without Borders and World Central Kitchen.