Since Italy became a country in 1861, there has been a surefire way to know who is and isn’t an Italian citizen: look at their parents.
The first page of the civil code, published in 1865 as the rulebook to Europe’s newest country, declared that a child born to an Italian citizen was an Italian citizen.
This founding tenet of the Bel Paese now looks set to change — ending diaspora dreams of returning to the mother country, and meaning that Italians who move abroad risk denying citizenship to their descendants.
On Thursday the Constitutional Court said it would rule in favor of the government and its controversial 2025 law that restricted citizenship for those born abroad. The law — issued last March via emergency decree — had been challenged by four judges, who questioned its constitutionality.
In the meantime Canada just started welcoming folks who have Canadian ancestry.
Yes, well, there are people who have lived abroad for generations, speak the local language, and don’t know Italian, but hold Italian citizenship simply because one of their great-great-grandparents was Italian. Meanwhile, people born and raised in Italy who know the language and the local dialect aren’t recognized as citizens simply because their parents aren’t Italian.
That’s a symptom of the cultural identity of italy. Italy as a nation is still very new. When italian emigrants left for other countries there was no national language. Italy was a kingdom of dialects. That’s why there’s millions of italian americans that don’t speak the language. Even if italian immigrants lived in common communities in their new countries, they may not know the dialect of their neighbors. So instead, they learned the local language and let their dialect die so they could communicate.
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Italy as a nation is very new
Italy is literally one of the first national states, wtf are you talking about?
… That’s why there’s millions of italian americans that don’t speak the language.
Assimilation is a thing. Unless you segregate your ethnic group, you’re bound to become part of local culture, rather than maintain your original one, regardless whether or not there is a language standard present in your historical motherland.
… they may not know the dialect of their neighbors
A dialect is a dialect. It is still a part of the same language.
The United States is older than Italy. Italy wasn’t a unified nation until 1871. The United States became a country in 1776. And Italians did segregate into ethnic centers of cities in the United States. Chicago, New York, and St. Louis all have heavy italian presence within certain neighborhoods but even still lost their language. Italian dialects are not the same as regional accents. The nationalization of the italian language was still underway well into the 20th century. The Florentine dialect was only spoken by about 10% of the population in the 1870’s at most. It wasn’t until mass market radio and TV came along that it began to rapidly spread.
Nation state and a cultural identity are not the same thing. A single language is related to the former but also not really the defining feature. The idea of Italy existed for centuries before it became one. Nation state as a concept is recent enough that it only started becoming popular after the United States was founded, from the French revolution onwards.
I don’t expect the current government to ever fix the second part, though.
I think if the decision had been going forward instead of backward, I would have felt better about it. Saying any descendents born after 2025 will not have assumed citizenship is very different than saying “Lol, your citizenship wasn’t real.”
Now I feel like the fact that I decided to learn Italian and work out an emigration plan before applying bit me in the ass. I should have started the process 15 years ago when I was as you say.
Exactly, plus, given the horrid conditions of many municipal offices in little towns that, in my opinion, should NOT count as separate municipalities, the public costs in terms of time and actual expenditure to verify the claims are ridiculously high.
Anyone care to explain? So with the citizenship law currently in place, you get Italian citizenship if any of your parents have it. But does that mean your kids will also get it since you have it? When does it stop? Seems like the nr of Italians abroad will balloon in a few generations if that’s the case. No wonder they want to change it
Why should it stop?
In Norway we have 5.5 million citizens. There are roughly 6 million American citizens of Norwegian descendants. If we had the same system that would put an unbelievable strain on our country
Citizenship is a social contract that provides dues and benefits. If you dont live there, don’t do your dues, but remain entitled to your benefits, wouldn’t that just strain the resources available to citizens who actually are living there, doing their dues?
The only real strain on the system is that they have to record where you are and send you official documents from time to time as well as providing a way to vote from abroad. In times of crisis they may organise emergency flights to get you out of danger.
Besides that, an Italian citizen living abroad is not a large expense for the government.
If they remigrate back to Italy, they’d be entitled to education and healthcare, which are the largest Italian expenditures, without contributing to the system.
That is true if they go to Italy after retirement age or very sick. Otherwise they’ll be working in Italy as well and be paying taxes in the country.
