Do Not Pass Go

It’s the end of the citizenship path for many descendants of Italian immigrants

Photo by Aedrian Salazar on Unsplash

Cari amici,

I intended to post this letter a week ago, but the God/esses of Time and Circumstance decided their priorities were more important than mine. But here we are.

On October 3, some long-awaited news landed with an explosive thump on the virtual doorsteps of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Italian citizenship seekers. And it broke their hearts. Many of us had feared we knew what the outcome would be, and we were right. The Ministry of the Interior, following recent rejections of citizenship cases by the highest court in Italy, has issued a directive that changes what’s been accepted practice for decades. The descendants of children born outside of Italy who were minors when their parent/s naturalized are no longer eligible to claim citizenship.

This is a major break with tradition that will have extensive and long-term consequences. Various internet sites put the number of people of Italian descent at 80 million worldwide, which includes roughly 18 million in the United States alone.

What? How?

To quote the admins of the Dual U.S. Italian Citizenship site and Facebook group, “if your Italian ancestor naturalized before August 16, 1992, while their U.S.-born (or other jus-soli-nation born) child was a minor (under 21 until March 9, 1975; under 18 after that), the Ministry now considers that child to have lost Italian citizenship when the parent naturalized.”

(Note: this has always been true for Italian-born children; children born in jus-soli countries were excluded because they could not naturalize with their parent since they were born citizens of that country.)

Because this is a mandate and not a guideline, all consulates and cities/towns in Italy that process JS citizenship (jure sanguinis, or citizenship by blood) must comply with it. The decision doesn’t affect the courts, but Rome and a few other regional courts have already been doing this (more on this below), and eventually the others will probably comply. There’s no law of precedence in the Italian courts, meaning that each judge can rule based on their own reasoning, but when the highest court in the land, the Court of Cassation, makes a U-turn, that ruling resonates down the line.

A little history

This change will have a massive impact on Italian Americans (North and South), many of whose ancestors left Italy during the Great Migration at the turn of the 20th century. Those immigrants who didn’t intend to stay didn’t bother naturalizing, but most of those who did stay wanted to become Americans. For some, that was motivation enough: assimilate, vote, have rights, be proud. For others, like my maternal grandmother, fear sent them running to file naturalization petitions when WW2 broke out, because as registered aliens they were at risk of deportation.

If Italians became naturalized Americans before their children were born, the line was broken, making them unable to pass down Italian citizenship. If their children were minors, however, there was no problem—until about six years ago, that is, when the Italian courts starting rejecting 1948 cases which involved minor children.

What’s a 1948 case?

Simply put, by law, prior to 1948 a woman could not pass Italian citizenship to her children. To claim citizenship through the JS process, you had to trace your line from a male ancestor. If you could, then you could apply for recognition in the consulates or in Italian municipalities. Those whose only unbroken line went through a female ancestor were out of luck.

This misogynistic practice changed in 1948 when a new constitution emerged from the rubble of World War II. It recognized women as having equal rights to men, and among those rights was passing down citizenship. However, there was no grandfathering-in of all those women who gave birth before 1948. Fast forward to 2009, when a Bologna-based attorney, Luigi Paiano, brought the first so-called 1948 case before the court of Rome. He won, and from then until sometime around the end of 2018, barring other complicating factors that might yield a rejection, a 1948 case was pretty much a shoo-in.

Starting in late 2018, the Court of Rome (where all 1948 cases were heard) began inconsistently rejecting 1948 cases in which a woman naturalized while her child was a minor. Those applying via the JS process (i.e., via a male ancestor) were never rejected for this reason. Voilà! Another instance of misogynistic rulings by judges when addressing cases involving descent from a female ancestor.

What has changed and why?

Reading about  the actual laws surrounding this issue makes it clear that what’s become known as “the minor issue”  was always murky terrain. Again quoting Dual U.S. Italian Citizenship:

“For decades, it was understood and interpreted that if a child was born to an Italian father (after 1948: to a parent) in a country like the US that gave citizenship by birth on its soil, that child would maintain their Italian citizenship even if that parent naturalized while the child was a minor, as long as the naturalization occurred on or after July 1, 1912.

This stems from two particular articles of Law 555 of 1912  (“the 1912 law”) — Article 7 and Article 12.  In short, Article 7 says that a child born in a jus soli country retains Italian citizenship, but has the right to renounce it when they come of age. Article 12(2), however, states that the unemancipated minor children of those who become foreigners also become foreigners.

Article 7 is written from the perspective of the minor child conserving citizenship, while Art 12(2) is written from the perspective of a father losing citizenship and the ramifications for his family. These articles are at odds with each other, and it is not difficult to see how alternate interpretations were drawn.”

So the Court of Cassation took a close look at these dueling Articles and decided that Article 12 should hold true, with the result that the number of people eligible to claim citizenship via the JS process has taken a huge hit. The only “good” thing about their decision is that it eliminates the misogyny of denying citizenship due to the minor issue only in female-ancestry 1948 cases.

Why would the Ministry do this?

All we can do is speculate. Some think it’s an anti-immigration tactic sparked by the far-right politician Matteo Salvini (Italy’s current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport) and his ilk; others pooh-pooh any political motives. Certainly resources and money enter into the picture. The reality is that the number of citizenship seekers has skyrocketed in recent years, putting a huge strain on both the consulates and the Italian courts. As an example, as of a year ago, membership in the Dual U.S.-Italian Citizenship group on Facebook had jumped from 10,000 to 56,000 in five years. Now, one year later, membership stands at 73,600.

The Rome judicial system was so overwhelmed that in 2022 it changed another longstanding practice. Between 2009, when the first 1948 cases were argued, until June 2022, all citizenship claims that required a court case were heard in Rome, as were the appeals of any rejections. As of June 2022, cases began being distributed to regional courts throughout Italy, with the location being determined by where a petitioner’s LIBRA (last Italian born-and-registered ancestor) was born.

There’s speculation floating around that politics, resources, and money aren’t the only possible explanations for this cambiamento nell’aria (change in the air). I’ve been on the dual-citizenship scene since 2017, and from what I’ve gathered from online conversations, many recognized Italians have no plans to move to their reacquired homeland—not exactly a boon for Italy. But of course, not everyone can pick up and move. Maybe their goal is to give their children or grandchildren options about where to live, or go to school, or expand their careers.

Maybe Italy is in a bit of a huff, sick of handing out Italian birth certificates and passports to people whose motives might seem, well, frivolous. For example, some people seeking citizenship have only one distant Italian ancestor (but Italian pride runs deep!), or they say they have never been to Italy and/or have no intention of getting an Italian passport. Others want that passport so they can use it for legal extended tourism, which doesn’t help Italy one bit unless that travel occurs primarily in Italy (and maybe even if it doesn’t).

I get it, Italy. Thing is, regardless of their motives, people who are eligible to become recognized Italian citizens have the right to do so. And until now, Italy has been lenient with its limits, far more so than countries that limit dual citizenship to only a generation or two. As long as the Italian bloodline isn’t interrupted by a naturalization somewhere along the way, descendants of Italian immigrants can go all the way back to 1861, when Italy became a nation. (Can’t have a nationality without a nation!) For young people today, that could mean going back to a great-great-great-grandparent. So in that sense, Italy has been generous. (Note: legislation is being discussed, as it has been for years, that would impose further limits, including residency, language, and the number of generations one can go back in claiming citizenship.)

What does this new mandate mean?

As is evident in the citizenship groups, many people are no longer eligible via JS, period; those who have more than one line are pivoting to 1948 cases in which the female ancestor either naturalized involuntarily with her husband (which Italy doesn’t recognize) or never naturalized at all. This will lighten the consulates’ load but could make things worse for an already overloaded court system.

How overloaded is it? As an example, one online commenter claims that more than 18,000 cases are pending in the Venice courts, most of which are Brazilians who brought suit because of excessively long wait times at their overwhelmed consulates. It’s fair to say that a good percentage of those cases involve minor children. Going forward, such cases will be ineligible.

So there may be more court cases down the road, but it’s hard to say because many cases already in the system involve a minor child and have thus become ineligible. It could be a wash. What seems certain is that there will be far fewer JS cases, thus easing the burden on Italian consulates abroad and on comuni in Italy.

I’ve read a lot of comments by people hoping that in a few years the law will change again, negating the minor issue entirely. Those who have far more knowledge and expertise than I do say this is extremely unlikely; if anything, the path to Italian citizenship will become narrower and its obstacles more numerous.

There are plenty of citizenship seekers out there who regret they didn’t start the process sooner. I’m one of them. When I first looked into it, in the early 2000s, my family had no path—my grandfathers naturalized before my parents were born, and we couldn’t go through my grandmothers (because women, nah). When the female line became viable in 2009, I wasn’t aware of it. It wasn’t until 2016, when one of my sons asked if I was absolutely sure we weren’t eligible, that I looked into the possibility again and discovered that we did indeed have what was at the time a clear path through my maternal grandmother. But by the time our case made it to the courts, the climate had changed, and judges who had previously always recognized cases like ours had begun to reject them. Like our judge, who our attorney had been thrilled to see assigned to us because of her favorable track record.

After waiting five years for an appeal that should happen soon, in December (and which has, by all estimates, zero chance of success), we will finally know the outcome of our case. In the meantime I’m searching for documents for another line in which my female ancestor involuntarily naturalized with her husband. If I can get everything we need—everything hinges on proper documentation—we should have another path with a clear shot. It will take years, but if living in Italy has taught me anything, it’s this: things take time, more than you ever imagined. I don’t always have much patience, but I’m trying.

Tante belle cose. Alla prossima—

Cheryl

Italian word of the day:

Actually, let’s make it two, because these adjectives make a nice counterpoint to each other. And they both start with M, so, you know, alliteration! Yay!

• mingherlino: skinny and scrawny; a weakling

• mozzafiato: breathtaking (a compound word combining the verb “to cut/chop off” with the noun “breath”)

P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites, or, better yet, order it from your local bookstore. Another fab option is to ask your library to stock it. If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’d be surprised how much a rating or review helps authors. Baci!