Found this on reddit, may be of some use?
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@LockeCJ Can you integrate this topic with the earlier https://bbs.elsewhere.cafe/t/emigrating-away-from-the-us/4030 and open that topic up for all users? Both have useful information which I am afraid may be necessary, particularly for people who will be under threat from a far-right US government.
Folks who are interested, the other topic started as my family’s successful experience in leaving the US for the EU in 2014-2015, specifically to Belgium (we now live in the south of France) though it contains information on other EU countries. If you have specific questions I will try to help. There is also some good info in there about emigrating to Israel, though that did not work out so well for the folks who did it.
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if he does, I will lose the capability to contribute, as is inside the speakeasy or whatever is named the private section. As many here, i’m a newly arrived happy mutant.
ETA: also, many of the newly arrived may need this and don’t have access either.
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Hopefully he can fix both items at the same time. I’m not sure why it was originally put into a restricted level, but it shouldn’t be.
It may be because there’s some personal stuff in there, but certainly nothing secret.
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That’s my concern. If people shared information with the expectation that it would be more private than normal, I can’t in good conscience betray that trust.
It’s not just about protecting from drive-by trolls and would-be harassers. If I move a topic to TL1, it will be indexed by search engines, which could potentially expose them to further problems.
I would only be willing to move that topic to a lower trust level if I received consent from everyone who contributed to it so far.
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Gotcha. I wouldn’t want the stuff I put in there to be Google-able, so leave it at the next TL up, I guess. The newest folks will be able to access it pretty soon anyway, right?
I’ll just be careful about contributing personal info on the new topic. and when the newer folks go up a TL, they’ll be able to see the more detailed stuff.
Thanks for looking out for us!
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By the way, how is the south of France?
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Well, it’s France. It’s a lot different than Belgium, that’s for sure. The weather is a whole lot nicer. It’s vaguely like southern California, which was one of the things I really missed about chronically wet, cold Belgium. The lifestyle is a lot different, which I’ve had less trouble than I expected adapting to, now that I’m retired from the corporate world. (I do have some other business things and side hustles going on, but I’d rather not provide details that are publicly available. If you’re interested, mention it in one of the Clubhouse/TL2 topics.) I’ve taken up watercolor painting, and the morning and evening light here is everything you’ve ever heard it to be.
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I never intended the thread to be a source of personal information. More like “pool resources” of places to look for info on emigration paths. TL2 thread is better served for personal experiences… if you can access it.
Give us a couple weeks, and we will all be there 
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I believe it’s just a matter of time and making some minor milestones, so you should see access there shortly. I know I saw the specific TL details somewhere lately but I can’t seem to find it right now. There’s a lot of new posts.
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I think LockeCJ mentioned it on another thread: 18 days of regular visits and we’ll be there 
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It sounds nice. I wish you well.
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There’s some evidence that my ancestors, originally Gotreau (no one uses it any more), came from there; my dad told me that “a great-aunt changed it in Canada”. If I have any relatives there, or anywhere across the pond, they’re very far removed in distance and in being related to me. Mom joke.
But no one who knows anything is alive anymore. My brother had an ancestry.com account, but I don’t remember it having any answers to my questions. And then there’s the legends passed down from my mom and dad that have nothing to prove them. I’m fairly certain that my great-grandparents on both sides were born not in the US except for at least my Grandpa Mardorf (dad’s grandpa) but his people came from Germany. He was born in NJ, I think in Passaic.
In any case, my son and I are trapped; his grandmother on his dad’s side was born in Poland, but I don’t think that’s an option, even if there wasn’t a war going on nearby.
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I just responded to a DM asking about my German citizenship process. Others might benefit from it, so I’m sharing it here. Sorry, it’s a bit long.
OK, here is my story so far. My mother was German. (Her family were refugees after WWII – not from the Nazis, just DP’s – but that makes no difference in my case.) She came to the US in 1960, married my American father in 1961. I was born in 1966, and my mom became a US citizen in 1967. That puts me into one of maybe 4 or 5 eligibility classes in this recent German law, the §5 StAG law I mentioned. More on these shortly.
I started the process by contacting a couple of law firms that specialize in German citizenship. One of them, a firm in Germany, wanted a lot of money (like $5000). I ended up with an attorney in Miami with licenses in both countries. She was cheaper, but it still cost $2500, in addition to various other charges related to finding documentation. For example, I had to secure the services of a Polish attorney to locate various documents from the Polish archives. (My mom’s family was from a region [Silesia] that was transferred to Poland after the war.) Basically I had to prove my “provenance” via certified copies of birth, death, marriage and other certificates. Collecting all the documentation was a hassle and cost maybe another $1000 for everything. A lot of that was for the Polish document search.
Finally, just last August all the documents were shipped off to the German Bundesverwaltungsamt (BVA, Federal Office of Administration) in Cologne. And now I wait. Apparently for at least a year, maybe two. But, I am confident that all my papers are in order, so it’s just a matter of time.
Re the law itself, here’s the BVA page about it: BVA - Citizenship - Amendment to German citizenship law
If you speak German and perhaps have contacts there, you could possibly try to apply on your own. It would be much cheaper.
Victims of Nazi persecution and their descendants were already eligible under the existing law (StAG) – that information is here: BVA - Wiedergutmachungseinbürgerung nach Verfolgung
The 2021 amendment (§5) added those who were previously excluded by gender-discriminatory regulations from acquiring German citizenship at birth: BVA - Erklärungserwerb – this page lists the document requirements (under the “Erklärung abgeben” tab)
The various “discriminated child” categories under §5 StAG are a bit complicated. Here’s a FAQ (this is actually from the attorney I used, Ellen von Geyso). See also, Re-naturalization according to § 5 StAG and Declaration or application for German citizenship if you do have a German mother or father but never were considered German - Federal Foreign Office
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I would not be so cavalier about that, especially now.
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Recently I learned about an EU option that others might not know: if you have a parent or (more likely) grandparent who left what is now Czechia (not the Slovakia half of former Czechoslovakia) before the outbreak of WWI, you can get citizenship. You have to prove the connection and the timing, and if you are under 65 you will have to learn the language well enough to pass a proficiency test, but it is an EU option that most people don’t even think of.
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So close. Bravo at the attempt.
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Here is the other thread:
I might create it as its own post later and pin it so that everyone is likely to see it.
Only 15, so even closer.
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I just found this very useful Reddit post of a flowchart of paths to German citizenship:
https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/wiki/citizenship/
Not all of the internal links work properly, unfortunately.
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