Argentine Citizenship by Naturalization

⚠️ Read this first — Milei changed this process by decree. In May 2025, Decree 366/2025 rewrote Argentine citizenship: naturalization was moved from the federal courts to Migraciones, and the two-year residence rule was tightened. This guide documents the old judicial process, under which already-filed, grandfathered-in cases like this one continued to completion. Nobody knows yet what the new process will look like in practice — but the courts have been striking the decree down (the Cámara Nacional Electoral annulled it in June 2026, with the government's Supreme Court appeal still pending), so it is very likely the decree gets overturned and Argentina returns to exactly this judicial process. That's why this walkthrough is still worth reading closely.

Warning: assignment does not equal filing. The case was assigned in February 2024, but the assignment alone did not start the judicial process. The complete document packet was not accepted until it was physically submitted at the Planta Baja intake desk of the Palacio de Justicia in February 2025. Missing that intake requirement cost approximately twelve months.

A practical, anonymized guide based on one successful Buenos Aires court case

This guide describes one applicant's successful judicial naturalization case in Buenos Aires Federal Civil and Commercial Court 10, Clerk's Office 20. The case was assigned in February 2024, properly filed through the required intake desk in February 2025, and reached a favorable judgment in August 2026. The oath had not yet occurred when this guide was prepared.

This is a personal process report, not legal advice. Requirements and workflow vary substantially by judge, clerk's office, applicant, and the law in effect at the time. Some courts ask for more livelihood evidence, some communicate readily by email or in person, and others process the same stages differently or more slowly. Court 10, Clerk's Office 20 was notably responsive to email and in-person inquiries in this case. Always follow the signed orders in your own file.

The main report omits the applicant's name, case number, identity numbers, email address, birth and family details, address, employers and clients, invoice numbers, exact financial records, signatures, and links to the public docket. It includes only an approximate monthly income figure because that figure is useful for understanding the livelihood evidence used in this case.

Privacy note: The community-message archive is distributed separately as Appendix B. It was automatically anonymized, but automated free-form-text redaction cannot guarantee that every identifier was detected.

The process at a glance

The case took approximately 30 months from the original assignment to judgment, but only about 16.5 months from formal court opening to judgment. Almost one year of the difference resulted from the missed physical-intake requirement between February 2024 and February 2025. It was an avoidable filing problem, not ordinary court processing time, and should not be treated as a standard timeline.

The most useful community resource: @ciudadaniaArgentina

The strongest practical recommendation from this experience is to join the Russian-language Telegram group Carta de Ciudadania - @ciudadaniaArgentina. It has a large historical archive of reports from people who have completed, or are currently completing, Argentine citizenship cases.

That archive is particularly useful because judicial naturalization is court-specific. Search the history for your court number and clerk's office number to find:

• Recent timelines from applicants assigned to the same office.
• Which original documents that clerk actually requested.
• How a particular office handles livelihood evidence, edicts, prosecutor review, and oaths.
• Whether email, Instagram, telephone, or an in-person visit tends to receive a response.
• How long recent applicants waited between originals certification, EN DESPACHO, judgment, and oath.
• Reports of additional requirements, delays, or avoidable procedural mistakes.

The group is more useful as a searchable experience database than as a source of universal rules. Read several recent accounts, check their dates, and compare them with the signed orders in your own docket. A report about another judge may not apply to your case. Automated translation makes the Russian-language archive accessible, and Telegram's export or API tools can help analyze a large history, but personal documents and identifying details should never be reposted publicly.

In this applicant's experience, other participants described Court 10, Clerk's Office 20 as one of the more responsive offices. That matched the applicant's own interactions, but it remains an anecdotal assessment rather than an official ranking.

Doing it yourself versus hiring a lawyer

This case was completed without paying a lawyer for full representation. The practical tradeoff was:

For this applicant, paying thousands of dollars to save roughly ten hours of active personal time was not worthwhile. Someone who cannot visit the court, is uncomfortable managing Spanish-language filings, has a complicated immigration/criminal/income history, or strongly values avoiding procedural mistakes may reach a different conclusion.

The real speed advantage is not simply skipping a 30-minute line. It is knowing the correct filing channel, recognizing when a document has not been incorporated, preparing the evidence the assigned judge expects, and following up at the right time. A lawyer can reduce preventable delay, but cannot control agency response times, court workload, prosecutor review, or the judge's decision.

What the court ultimately evaluated

The prosecutor's written opinion and the final judgment show the main categories considered in this case:

• Adult age and actual domicile within the court's jurisdiction.
• The required period of continuous residence, subject to any statutory exceptions.
• Identity, civil status, and regular immigration status.
• Honest occupation or lawful means of support.
• Good conduct and the absence of disqualifying criminal matters.
• Current reports from the relevant Argentine and foreign authorities.
• Completion of the required public notice or edict.
• Authenticity of the original documents uploaded digitally.

The prosecutor advised the court; the judge made the final decision. A prosecutor's opinion is an important stage, but it is not the citizenship judgment.

Phase 1: Assignment, filing, and getting the case properly opened

The application was assigned to Court 10, Clerk's Office 20 in February 2024. At the time, the applicant mistakenly understood the assignment itself to mean that the case had been filed and would begin moving automatically.

That was incorrect. The complete citizenship packet, including the case cover sheet, initiation form, and supporting documentation, still had to be physically delivered to the Planta Baja intake desk at the Palacio de Justicia. Because the applicant did not understand that requirement, the packet was not properly received and no effective intake took place in February 2024.

The case therefore did not appear or move as expected in the public system. The problem was discovered only after follow-up with the assignment office and an in-person court inquiry. The applicant then completed the Planta Baja submission in February 2025, twelve months after the original assignment. Once the packet had been correctly received, the court formally opened the citizenship case in March 2025 and ordered the institutional reports.

This was the largest avoidable delay in the entire case. The period from February 2024 through February 2025 should not be interpreted as the assigned judge taking a year to act; the judicial process had not properly started because the physical intake step had never been completed.

Lessons from this phase

• Assignment is not the same as formal opening.
• After receiving a court assignment, identify exactly where the complete physical packet must be delivered; in this case it was the Planta Baja intake desk at the Palacio de Justicia.
• Keep the assignment email, cover sheet, initiation form, delivery receipt, and a copy of the complete filing.
• Confirm that any required physical filing reaches the correct intake desk.
• Do not assume that an assignment email, court number, or case cover sheet proves that intake has occurred.
• If the case cannot be found online, contact the assignment office and ask whether the physical packet was received.
• Confirm receipt and online visibility promptly rather than waiting months under the assumption that an assigned case is actively moving.

Phase 2: Court-issued reports and background checks

After formal opening, the court issued electronic requests to several public bodies. The docket reflected reports or communications involving:

• The federal police fingerprint/background unit.
• The national criminal-record authority.
• The migration authority.
• The national identity registry.
• The electoral/citizenship registry.
• INTERPOL or another international police channel.

The reports arrived gradually over approximately 4.5 months. Some appeared quickly; others took several months. This part of the process was mostly work between the court and government agencies.

The final judgment later confirmed that the reports did not reveal a legal obstacle and that the applicant's immigration status was regular.

Lessons from this phase

• Do not assume a report already held by one agency automatically satisfies the court's separate request.
• Read the exact court order before visiting an agency or repeating a procedure.
• Monitor which requested reports have actually been incorporated into the docket.
• If one report is missing long after the others arrived, make a focused inquiry identifying that report.
• A series of transmission entries may represent one report being sent, received, and attached; they are not necessarily separate applicant tasks.

Phase 3: Proving livelihood and publishing the edict

Several months after the last visible government response, the applicant obtained a quote dated February 24, 2026 of ARS 909,419.42 including VAT to publish the edict for two days in El Cronista. That same day, the applicant emailed the court with a professional income certification and asked for authorization to publish in Gaceta de Paz instead.

The request expressly said that it was not based on economic impossibility or a claim to free publication. It argued that Article 11 of Law 346, as amended by Law 24,951, required publication in a newspaper circulating in the jurisdiction of the applicant's real domicile but did not mandate a particular newspaper. It also asked the court to provide a reasoned formal decision if it denied the request. Sending this request to the court did not itself require a filing fee.

On March 13, 2026, 17 days after the email, the docket incorporated the El Cronista quote, income evidence, and publication-change request. The court then issued a replacement edict for the Boletín de la Bolsa de Comercio rather than for the requested Gaceta de Paz. Publication ultimately cost ARS 105,000 for two days. These amounts and procedures are historical facts from this case, not current price guidance.

The replacement order made the applicant responsible for downloading and printing the edict, arranging and paying for publication, and later proving that both publications occurred.

The publication workflow required:

1. Sending the court-issued edict to the publisher.
2. Confirming the correct publication mailbox and format.
3. Obtaining a current quote.
4. Paying the publisher and sending proof of payment.
5. Receiving confirmation of both publication dates.
6. Saving the receipt and PDF pages showing each publication.
7. Sending the completed proof set to the court.
8. Confirming that the proof was actually incorporated into the docket.

Anonymized request to change the publication

Subject: [EXPEDIENTE] — Certificado de medios de vida y solicitud de cambio de publicación

Buen día:

Me dirijo a V.S. en relación con el expediente [NÚMERO], caratulado “[CARÁTULA]”.

Adjunto la certificación actualizada de medios de vida, debidamente legalizada, para su incorporación al expediente.

Asimismo, habiendo recibido el edicto para su publicación en [MEDIO ORIGINAL], solicito respetuosamente autorización para publicarlo en [MEDIO ALTERNATIVO], que posee circulación en la jurisdicción de mi domicilio real y cumple con el artículo 11 de la Ley 346, conforme Ley 24.951.

Aclaro que esta petición no se funda en una imposibilidad económica ni en una solicitud de gratuidad, sino en que el medio alternativo satisface el requisito legal aplicable y ofrece condiciones de publicación más accesibles. Si la sustitución no resultara procedente, solicito respetuosamente que se indique el fundamento normativo de la decisión.

Solicito acuse de recibo de este correo y de los documentos adjuntos.

Saludos cordiales,<br>

[NOMBRE]<br>

[DOCUMENTO]<br>

[EXPEDIENTE]

Adapt the template to the signed order and the facts of the individual case. Do not claim financial hardship unless that is accurate and relevant.

Livelihood evidence used in this case

The applicant was self-employed and reported approximately USD 1,500 per month in recurring professional income. The package used:

• A certification of income prepared by a licensed accountant.
• Legalization of the accountant's signature through the professional council.
• Supporting Argentine Factura E export-service invoices covering a recent, continuous period.
• A short explanation of the professional activity and source of income.
• Monotributo registration or payment support.
• Banco Ciudad records showing the related financial activity, retained as corroborating evidence.

The accountant used the invoices to substantiate the certification, and the court reviewed the legalized certification together with the supporting facturas. Banco Ciudad statements or payment records and monotributo support strengthened the paper trail and were kept available, although the clerk did not ultimately ask to inspect the bank statements during the originals review.

Community discussions and the accountant indicated that approximately USD 1,000 per month was a practical bare-minimum income level to aim to document. That was not stated in the court's order and is not an official or universal legal threshold. Judges evaluate whether the applicant has an honest occupation or lawful means of support in the context of the individual case. Amounts, expectations, and acceptable supporting documents can vary substantially.

Accountant recommendation and cost

The accountant used in this case was @pavelnikx. He uses the separate Telegram bot @CartaDeCiudadania_bot to manage the workflow. The applicant's experience was excellent: intake, invoice submission, questions, and delivery were handled remotely through the bot, and the income certification cost approximately USD 50 at the time.

The service turned the recent Factura E history into a formal accountant's income certification and arranged the professional legalization needed for court. This was inexpensive, fast, and much simpler than coordinating the certification manually.

This is a personal recommendation, not a guarantee or paid endorsement. Fees, turnaround times, credentials, bot workflow, and professional-council legalization requirements can change. Confirm the current service, price, certification period, and whether the final document includes the legalization required by the assigned court before paying.

Make the facturas detailed

The Factura E invoices were central to both the accountant's work and the court's livelihood review. Each invoice should make the underlying work understandable without requiring the reviewer to guess. Include, where accurate and appropriate:

• The real customer or recipient and their identifying information.
• A specific description of the professional service or deliverable.
• The service period or relevant date.
• The correct amount and currency.
• A consistent relationship between the invoice, accountant's certification, tax records, and received payment.

Avoid generic descriptions such as only services or consulting when a more accurate description is available. A continuous run of detailed, internally consistent invoices is easier for an accountant to certify and easier for a court to understand. Never create or alter an invoice merely to improve a citizenship application; it must reflect genuine work and actual income.

Lessons from this phase

• An edict order creates an applicant action item; issuance of the edict is not completion.
• Preserve the receipt and both publication pages.
• Confirm that emailed evidence reaches the case file. In this case, an emailed edict submission did not initially appear, and an in-person visit resolved the problem.
• Make income evidence current, coherent, and easy to follow.
• Invoices should identify the recipient and clearly describe real services. Vague, anonymous, or internally inconsistent invoices create avoidable risk.
• For export work, detailed Factura E invoices can provide a clear bridge between professional activity, the accountant's certification, monotributo records, and incoming payments.
• Bank statements and tax-payment records can be useful backup, but they are not a universal substitute for the proof ordered by the court.

Phase 4: Completing the evidence and referral to the prosecutor

The applicant sent the court:

• Proof of both edict publications.
• A current criminal-record certificate from the country of origin.
• Supporting invoices.
• Refreshed proof of lawful income.

At an in-person visit, the clerk reviewed the file, identified a missing foreign criminal-record item, accepted it when supplied, and reviewed the livelihood documents. The court later entered the evidence into the docket and sent the case to the federal prosecutor.

Approximately six weeks passed between the April evidence submissions and the docket entry formally incorporating them and sending the case to the prosecutor.

The prosecutor responded very quickly once the referral occurred. The opinion did not reject the application. It explained the legal requirements, emphasized that reports should be current, and left the final evaluation to the judge.

Lessons from this phase

• Emailing a document is not the same as having it incorporated into the docket.
• Use a concise attachment list and ask the clerk to acknowledge receipt of important submissions.
• If a complete evidence package remains absent from the docket, a respectful in-person inquiry may be more effective than repeated emails.
• A non-negative prosecutor opinion is a milestone, not the final approval.
• Continue monitoring for a court order after the prosecutor's response.

Phase 5: Originals certification and updated livelihood proof

Immediately after the prosecutor's opinion, the court issued a pre-judgment order requiring the applicant to:

• Appear at the courthouse with the originals of documents previously filed digitally.
• Allow the clerk's office to compare and certify those originals.
• Prove means of livelihood through formally authenticated evidence.

The order gave two examples of acceptable livelihood evidence:

• An accountant's income certification with the professional's signature certified by the professional council; or
• An employment certificate with the signer's signature certified by a bank or notary.

The applicant brought a broad originals binder, including the identity, civil-status, criminal-record, apostille, translation, and livelihood documents relevant to the digital case file. The clerk reviewed and certified the originals. The docket then recorded completion of the originals-exhibition and certification step.

A practical originals checklist

Bring the originals of everything important that was uploaded, especially:

• Passport and local identification.
• Birth certificate.
• Marriage, divorce, name-change, or other relevant civil-status records.
• Country-of-origin criminal-record certificate.
• Apostilles or other required legalizations.
• Sworn Spanish translations and their legalizations where applicable.
• Residence or domicile evidence used in the file.
• Edict publication proof.
• Current accountant or employment certification.
• Supporting invoices or salary records.
• Backup tax or payment evidence if it helps explain the livelihood package.

This is not a universal list. The controlling list is the set of documents in your digital file plus anything specifically ordered by your court.

Lessons from this phase

• Preserve every original from the moment the case is filed.
• Make sure the original, apostille, translation, and uploaded scan all correspond.
• Bring more organized support than you expect to show, but lead with the items specifically ordered.
• A current, legalized accountant certificate and clear supporting invoices formed a strong, understandable package in this case.
• Once the clerk certifies the originals, avoid submitting additional unrequested documents unless something materially changes.

Phase 6: Waiting for judgment

After the originals were certified, the clerk said the file looked complete and advised monitoring the public system periodically. The docket returned to EN LETRA, which did not mean rejection; it meant the file was back in ordinary processing.

About three weeks later, the applicant sent a concise status email. The clerk replied that the case was en revision de sentencia, or under review for judgment, and instructed the applicant to continue monitoring the system.

A later follow-up received no email response. The public docket remained the authoritative source. Approximately 51 days after the originals certification, the case moved to EN DESPACHO; the citizenship judgment was signed the following day.

Secondary reports collected during the process suggested that Court 10 / Clerk's Office 20 often took roughly two to three months from originals certification to judgment, with considerable variation. This case was somewhat faster than two months. These reports are orientation, not a guaranteed service standard.

A sensible follow-up strategy

• Monitor the docket every one to two weeks after the originals check.
• Allow several weeks before asking for a status update unless the court gave a shorter timeline.
• Keep the message short: identify the case, state the completed milestone, ask for current status, and ask whether anything remains required.
• If a material filing is not incorporated or the case remains inactive beyond the court's stated expectation, consider a respectful in-person inquiry.
• Do not claim that follow-up causes a favorable judgment. It can reveal a missing item or prompt administrative handling, but it does not change the merits.

Generic status email in Spanish

Subject: Consulta de estado - expediente de ciudadanía

Estimada Secretaría:

Buen día. Me comunico para consultar brevemente por el estado de mi expediente de ciudadanía.

El [fecha] cumplí con [presentación de originales / documentación solicitada]. Quisiera saber si el expediente continúa en revisión y si necesitan alguna documentación o gestión adicional de mi parte.

Muchas gracias.

Saludos cordiales,

[Nombre y datos del expediente]

Phase 7: Judgment and formal notification

The final docket sequence was straightforward:

1. EN DESPACHO: the file was with the court for work or signature.
2. FIRMA DESPACHO - SENTENCIA CIUDADANIA: the judge signed the citizenship judgment.
3. EMISION DE CEDULA: the court generated formal notice.
4. CEDULA ELECTRONICA TRIBUNAL: the judgment was electronically notified.
5. EN LETRA: the file returned to ordinary processing after the ruling.

The judgment found no disqualifying obstacle, recognized regular immigration status, and concluded that the applicant met the constitutional and statutory conditions. It declared the applicant an Argentine citizen, subject to taking the oath of fidelity to Argentina, its institutions, and the Constitution before issuance of the citizenship title.

The court also ordered communications to the national identity, electoral, and migration authorities and stated that enrollment must be completed within one year.

Lessons from this phase

• EN DESPACHO is encouraging but is not itself a judgment.
• Look for a signed SENTENCIA document and formal notification.
• Read the operative section of the judgment, not just the docket description.
• A favorable judgment resolves the merits, but the oath remains an essential court step.

Phase 8: Oath, citizenship title, DNI, and passport

After the judgment appeared, the applicant emailed the clerk's office requesting an oath appointment and asking what identification or documents to bring. No oath date had been recorded when this guide was completed.

The expected sequence was:

1. Clerk's office assigns the oath appointment.
2. Applicant appears and takes the oath.
3. Court issues or delivers the citizenship certificate/title.
4. Applicant completes the RENAPER process for an Argentine citizen DNI.
5. Applicant applies for an Argentine passport after the citizen identity documentation is available.

The judgment and the clerk's instructions control this stage. Do not assume that another court's oath schedule or document list applies.

Generic oath-request email in Spanish

Subject: Solicitud de turno para juramento - expediente de ciudadanía

Estimada Secretaría:

Buen día. He tomado conocimiento de la sentencia dictada en mi expediente de ciudadanía.

Quisiera solicitar un turno para prestar juramento y agradecería que me informaran la fecha asignada y la documentación que debo presentar.

Muchas gracias.

Saludos cordiales,

[Nombre y datos del expediente]

How to read common PJN docket entries

The document-management system that worked

Maintain one folder per phase and keep both source documents and a simple index. A useful structure is:

citizenship/
  01-initial-filing/
  02-civil-and-identity-originals/
  03-background-and-residence/
  04-edict-publication/
  05-income-and-livelihood/
  06-prosecutor-and-court-orders/
  07-originals-certification/
  08-judgment-and-oath/

For every submission, retain:

• The court order that created the requirement.
• The exact PDF or document sent.
• The sent email or filing receipt.
• The court's acknowledgment, if any.
• The later docket entry showing incorporation.
• The original paper document in a labeled binder.

What helped most

• Discovering and correcting the initial intake problem instead of waiting indefinitely.
• Checking whether important emailed documents actually appeared in the docket.
• Bringing missing or unprocessed evidence directly to the clerk when appropriate.
• Using a current, professionally legalized income certification with clear supporting invoices.
• Using detailed Factura E exports, monotributo support, and Banco Ciudad records to create a coherent livelihood trail.
• Handling the accountant certification with @pavelnikx through @CartaDeCiudadania_bot.
• Keeping apostilled, translated, and legalized originals organized for the final comparison.
• Sending concise, milestone-based status inquiries rather than frequent generic reminders.
• Treating the PJN docket and signed orders as authoritative, with email and chat used as supporting tools.
• Searching the @ciudadaniaArgentina Telegram history for recent reports about the assigned court and clerk's office.

What not to overgeneralize

• There is no single document list that every court applies identically.
• An accountant certificate, bank statements, tax records, or a particular number of invoices are not universally required in the same form.
• USD 1,000 per month was an anecdotal practical minimum reported during this case, not an official statutory threshold or a guarantee of acceptance.
• The approximately USD 50 accountant fee was the price at that time and may change.
• A prosecutor's opinion is not the judge's decision.
• EN DESPACHO does not promise a sentence within a fixed number of days.
• Email follow-up does not determine the legal outcome.
• Community timelines are not court commitments.
• Praise or criticism of a particular judge or clerk in a chat is anecdotal, not an official performance measure.
• A lawyer may prevent mistakes and handle courthouse work, but cannot guarantee a shorter timeline or favorable result.
• Newspaper, pricing, filing, and oath procedures can change.

Privacy warning for sharing your own experience

Do not share unredacted court PDFs. Before publishing screenshots, PDFs, or spreadsheets, remove:

• Names and signatures.
• DNI, CUIT, passport, and case numbers.
• Birth dates and places, parents' names, and family details.
• Email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and docket URLs.
• Employer or client names, invoice numbers, exact income, account details, and tax identifiers.
• Barcodes, QR codes, document hashes, electronic-notification numbers, and embedded PDF metadata.
• Names or personal information of third parties appearing in newspaper pages or bundled documents.

Re-type the useful procedural information into a clean document instead of distributing redacted-looking originals unless every page has been visually checked.

Final takeaway

The successful path in this case was not one uninterrupted application. It was a sequence of evidence and verification stages:

Correctly file the case -> wait for official reports -> prove livelihood -> publish and prove the edict -> complete missing evidence -> prosecutor review -> show originals -> wait for judgment -> take the oath -> obtain citizen documents.

The most important practical habit was verification: verify that the initial packet reached the court, verify that agency reports arrived, verify that emailed evidence was incorporated, verify that originals matched the digital file, and verify the final result through a signed judgment rather than a status label.

Source basis

This guide was reconstructed from:

• The complete visible PJN movement history through August 2026.
• Signed court orders, agency responses, the prosecutor's opinion, and the favorable judgment available in the local case archive.
• Thirteen Gmail messages sent to or received from the assigned clerk's office, plus the related edict-publication correspondence.
• The applicant's citizenship-related notes and progress reports in the synced Aleph Argentina Telegram archive.
• Secondary community timing reports saved in that archive, used only as orientation and labeled accordingly.
• Judge- and clerk-specific experience reports associated with the Russian-language @ciudadaniaArgentina community, treated as anecdotal guidance rather than official instructions.

Some older docket attachments were unavailable through the authenticated PJN viewer. Their dates and docket descriptions were retained, but this guide does not invent or attribute contents to files that could not be downloaded.

Appendix A: Searching the citizenship group through Telegram's API

Telegram's normal search is useful for a few queries. For a systematic comparison of judges, clerk's offices, requirements, and timelines, the history can also be searched through Telegram's API.

Use Telegram's MTProto API through a normal user account, not a basic Bot API bot. A user session can read the history that the logged-in account is permitted to see in groups it has joined. Bots receive a more limited set of group updates and are not a dependable way to reconstruct a large pre-existing archive. Telegram explains how to obtain an api_id and api_hash at Creating your Telegram Application, and the Telethon client documentation documents history iteration and server-side search.

Quick one-off search with Python and Telethon

1. Join @ciudadaniaArgentina using the Telegram account that will run the search.
2. Sign in at my.telegram.org, open API development tools, and create an application to receive an api_id and api_hash.
3. Create a private working folder and install Telethon:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install telethon python-dotenv

1. Store credentials outside source control in a .env file:

TELEGRAM_API_ID=replace_with_api_id
TELEGRAM_API_HASH=replace_with_api_hash

1. Run a search such as:

import os

from dotenv import load_dotenv
from telethon.sync import TelegramClient

load_dotenv()

terms = [
    "juzgado 10",
    "secretaria 20",
    "secretaría 20",
    "originales",
    "dictamen fiscal",
    "en despacho",
    "sentencia",
    "juramento",
]

hits = {}

with TelegramClient(
    "citizenship_search",
    int(os.environ["TELEGRAM_API_ID"]),
    os.environ["TELEGRAM_API_HASH"],
) as client:
    group = client.get_entity("ciudadaniaArgentina")

    for term in terms:
        for message in client.iter_messages(group, search=term, limit=500):
            if message.text:
                hits[message.id] = message

for message in sorted(hits.values(), key=lambda item: item.date):
    text = " ".join(message.text.split())
    print(f"{message.date:%Y-%m-%d} | {message.id} | {text[:500]}")

The first run prompts for the Telegram login code and, if enabled, the account's two-factor-authentication password. Telethon then creates a .session file. That file and the API credentials are sensitive: do not email them, upload them, commit them to Git, or include them in an AI prompt.

Search several variations because members mix Spanish, Russian, abbreviations, punctuation, and misspellings. Useful terms include the court number, juzgado, juez, the clerk number, secretaria, sec, originales, medios de vida, fiscal, dictamen, sentencia, and juramento. Search dates separately when trying to measure a current timeline.

The searchable server setup used for this guide

The setup behind this guide uses the same basic approach at a larger scale:

Telegram user account through MTProto/Telethon
  -> one-time history backfill for approved groups
  -> real-time listener restricted by a group whitelist
  -> text-message staging database
  -> PostgreSQL unified message table
  -> full-text index and read-only search scripts
  -> human or AI synthesis of the retrieved evidence

The history backfill uses iter_messages() to paginate through the group, while a long-running NewMessage event listener captures later messages. Inserts are idempotent. A reusable implementation should use the Telegram chat ID and message ID together as the durable unique key so identically numbered messages from different conversations cannot collide. The collector stores fields such as source, chat ID and name, message ID, sender label, message text, timestamp, and whether the message came from the account owner. Media is excluded from this research index unless it is deliberately downloaded and handled under a separate privacy policy.

In the snapshot used for this guide, the citizenship group contributed approximately 85,000 searchable text messages, covering late 2022 through August 2026. A group-specific whitelist prevented unrelated private chats from being collected. The live collector ran as a restricted service on an always-on server, read credentials from a secret store, restarted automatically after failure, and wrote only new messages into PostgreSQL.

A simplified search against that database looks like this:

SELECT sent_at,
       chat_name,
       sender_name,
       left(content, 300) AS excerpt
FROM messages_unified
WHERE source = 'telegram'
  AND lower(chat_name) LIKE '%ciudadania%'
  AND to_tsvector('english', coalesce(content, ''))
      @@ websearch_to_tsquery(
           'english',
           '"juzgado 10" "secretaria 20"'
         )
ORDER BY sent_at DESC
LIMIT 100;

For a timing overview, group matching messages by day or month before reading individual excerpts:

SELECT date_trunc('month', sent_at)::date AS month,
       count(*) AS matching_messages
FROM messages_unified
WHERE source = 'telegram'
  AND lower(chat_name) LIKE '%ciudadania%'
  AND to_tsvector('english', coalesce(content, ''))
      @@ websearch_to_tsquery('english', '"juzgado 10" sentencia')
GROUP BY month
ORDER BY month DESC;

An English full-text index is fast for names, numbers, and many Spanish court terms, but it is not complete multilingual search. If the result seems too small, repeat it using exact ILIKE searches for Spanish and Russian variants, or add a PostgreSQL simple full-text index for language-neutral tokenization.

How to turn search results into useful guidance

• Start with a narrow court-and-clerk query, then search each procedural stage separately.
• Prefer recent reports because staff, law, publication procedures, and backlog change.
• Count unique cases or authors where possible; twenty messages about one case are not twenty independent experiences.
• Read several messages before and after each hit so a status update is not separated from its correction or outcome.
• Label court orders and direct clerk replies as primary evidence; label participant reports as anecdotal evidence.
• Use AI to cluster dates, stages, document requests, and reported durations only after retrieving the relevant messages.
• Do not ask AI to infer a universal requirement from one person's experience.
• Publish summaries and aggregate timing, not raw exports, usernames, phone numbers, or personal documents.

Telegram requires third-party API clients to comply with its API Terms of Use. Collect only conversations the account is entitled to access, minimize retained personal data, respect group rules, and never use this workflow for unsolicited messaging, member profiling, or redistribution of private content.

Appendix B: Separate Telegram archive

The complete anonymized Telegram corpus is maintained as a separate document (not published on this site).