Summary
Italy granted citizenship to Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, due to his Italian ancestry, sparking outrage over the contrast with strict citizenship rules for children of migrants born in Italy.
Critics, including opposition lawmaker Riccardo Magi, called the decision discriminatory, highlighting Italy’s restrictive laws for migrants despite allowing distant descendants of Italians to claim citizenship.
Milei, who has close ties with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is in Rome for political events.
Pro-migrant groups have pushed for reforms, but Meloni’s right-wing government opposes easing citizenship laws.
Italy is weird about giving citizenship.
Normal foreigner? LOL in order to get citizenship you need to pass a language test, being a legal resident for decades (=paid at least 100k in taxes), with the “green card” that expires every 1-2 years but takes 6-12 months to get renewed, with requirements that change every year and the queues at the immigration office are massive (go in line at 5 am, get to the booth at 4 pm)
8 generations ago your grandpa had Italian origins? LOL just fill the form and get the citizenship, no language test required.
Basically almost all south America is eligible for an Italian passport because you just need to prove to have someone of Italian descent in your family tree, no matter how many years or generations ago. No language test, no need to find a specialized job, thanks to that 250 years old ancestor you will get:
Isn’t that great?
I’m Italian and I wonder why the EU hasn’t stopped this madness yet.
The EU doesn’t have that kind of power over individual member states. It’s not like the EU is like a federal government.
I’d really like a federal EU.
Not gonna happen. Too many fundamental differences between member countries and too many very powerful anti-EU groups in the individual parliaments and in the EU Parliament. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1999 also ruled out and prohibits the idea of a federal, EU-wide citizenship. The EU will always be mainly a trade cooperation.
FlyingSquid would probably be interested in that information, if they have any Italian heritage through either their or their partner’s families.
Is it really that simple? I’ve been looking into doing this myself. I have a great grandpa that came over in the early 1900’s. It seemed very difficult and involved. Expensive as well. I was intimidated enough at the moment to not try and start the process
The problem is needing to prove it. The more far is the relative, the hardest is to get the documents
If he was born in the 1800s and all the documentation (passports from the 1900s, other stuff) is now gone, then now you need to hire some archivist that goes to find and check the handwritten records located in some remote church (the Italian government didn’t even exist at the time, birth records were held by churches) since last two centuries ago.
Of course that means that rich people can buy citizenship by finding some dishonest archivist that certifies a forged handwritten birth record and creates fake proofs of existence
I am extremely fortunate and privileged in that I have his birth and marriage certificate, as well as his parents’ certificates. According to old family stories, apparently he fled from a village in Italy that has since become a tourist attraction. Descendants of that village formed a group through the power of the internet. They actually have family trees dating back into the early 1700’s which is cool as hell. I got in contact with them recently and was given my family tree which at least to my great great grandparents on his side is accurate to some Ancestry research from about 10 years ago.