[Carol4561]

I have a friend living here from poland. She lost her paperwork due to an unfortunate fire. What can we do to replace her paperwork?

[donf]

First,

Let's really establish the "Legal vs. illegal" status.

Did your friend enter our country according to our rules and regulation? What were the circumstances the forced her to leave Poland?

Would she be safe from prosecution under Polish law if she returned to Poland?

Back to our side of the pond. If your friend initially legaly entered our country, then our State Department and Immigration are the places to start with.

The problem is the she has to re-reestablish her identity before making formal applications for citizenship. If the documents you need to provide proof of identity were destroyed here, the recreation of the documents might be a pain in the tuckus, but as long as you follow the guidelines written by our Feds, then she should be fine.

However, if the documents were destroyed over in Poland, then you have an uphill fight to get our Sate Department to work with Poland to get her identity established.

Tell her, welcome home for me. And please give her a metaphorical welcome hug!