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The judicial case derived from the procedure for obtaining Italian citizenship by the Barcelona soccer player Luis Suárez, in which several professors at the University for Foreigners of Perugia are accused of having promoted Suárez to the Italian language exam after having accepted the questions and despite not having the necessary requirements, he reopened the debate on the criteria with which citizenship is assigned, which has been going on for several years.
In short: in Italy, at this time, it is extremely difficult to obtain citizenship if you were born in Italy to foreign parents, a condition in which hundreds of thousands of children are found, or if you come to Italy from a non-European country; On the other hand, it is quite easy to obtain it if you marry an Italian citizen, even if you have no connection but no experience of life in Italy, or if you have Italian relatives even very far away (Suárez’s case is framed in both circumstances).
The first condition is due to the fact that the last citizenship law, enacted in 1992, establishes that the main method of acquisition is the the right of blood (from Latin, “right of blood”): a child is Italian if at least one of the parents is Italian. A child born to foreign parents, even if he was born on Italian territory, can apply for citizenship only after he has turned 18 years old.
In recent years, the center-left parties that have succeeded the government have often spoken about the possibility of passing a new law providing for the just right – in short: anyone born in Italy is Italian – or some more gradual variants, for example, those that would allow those born in Italy to apply for citizenship and have completed at least one cycle of studies in Italy. No reform has ever been approved, both for fear that the center-left will lose consensus and for the explicit opposition of government allies, from the New Center-right in the last legislature to the 5-Star Movement in the current one.
On the other hand, it is quite easy to obtain citizenship in some very specific cases, which usually involve people who do not have strong concrete ties to Italy. Italian law recognizes as Italian citizens all those who have at least one Italian father or who can prove that they had an Italian ancestor even if they are quite distant, even if they were not born in Italy, have never been to Italy and do not speak Italian.
It means that today a foreign citizen able to prove that he had an Italian ancestor in 1861 (the time when Italy was born) who did not renounce his citizenship could apply for Italian citizenship for himself and have it recognized. According to the estimates of the Chancellery, according to this law there could be up to 80 million potential Italians in the world, almost all concentrated in South America: in short, according to the law there would be more Italians outside of Italy than Italians in Italy. (The figure usually appears in statements and documents, but it is not clear how it was calculated.) The protection of the interests of Italians who emigrated abroad, and therefore their descendants, has often been carried out by the extreme right: one of the latest achievements was the possibility of electing deputies and senators in special constituencies, approved in 2001 thanks to Minister Mirko. Tremaglia, one of the most important leaders of the post-fascist movement in Italy.
Many people apply for this facilitated path to obtain citizenship: and not all do so because they want to move to Italy or after having “rediscovered” their roots (in fact: one can imagine that they are a residual percentage). The Italian passport is one of the strongest in the world and allows you to move freely throughout the European Union: it is in high demand, especially in poor countries and those with complicated political and economic situations, whose citizens have great difficulties traveling.
Until recently, there was an even simpler way to obtain citizenship: marrying an Italian citizen or citizen. “The spouse, foreigner or stateless, of an Italian citizen can acquire Italian citizenship when, after marriage, he has legally resided for at least two years in the territory of the Republic, or after three years from the date of marriage if he resides abroad “, explains the Minister of the Interior.
For about two years, Parliament has added a small obstacle to this process: an amendment approved during the process of converting the first “security decree” promoted by Matteo Salvini establishes that to obtain citizenship, the spouse passes an examination of Italian language Level B1, which certifies a basic knowledge of the language: it is the exam that Luis Suárez had to take, who is married to a woman who is the daughter of an Italian immigrant in Uruguay who years ago obtained citizenship thanks to the loose tights described above.
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