Why Italy is Changing its Blood Citizenship Laws

In this video we’re going to look at why Italy is changing its citizenship laws and how it actually may prove pretty controversial.

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[starseeker]

Damn.. millions of american italians that never been to Italy, know nothing about culture beyond movie tropes, never tried to learn italian and think pizza comes from new york, will be mad about this

Edit : wow what a war below, funny how many people believe a tiktok video that told them that pizza was invented in New York

[qdaniele]

To give a bit more context:
My father is the only administrative employee at the town hall of a small municipality in Piedmont, with just 272 residents as of 2025.

Over the past few years, he's been handling multiple citizenship requests every week, most of them submitted by law firms that churn them out like cookie-cutter applications on behalf of people who have never set foot in Italy and likely never will.

The process involves reviewing old, often poorly translated and sometimes dubiously authenticated documents tracing back several generations. These law firms frequently "forget" to include essential paperwork, either out of negligence or (more likely) to try to rush the process by doing the bare minimum.

My father often has to chase them down for missing documents, verify details with foreign consulates, and double or even triple-check everything. If he makes a mistake, either by granting citizenship to someone who wasn’t actually eligible or by denying it to someone who was, he alone bears the legal responsibility.

All of this falls on one person, simply because these law firms know that small town halls often lack the staff and resources to thoroughly vet every application. They're banking on overworked clerks being too overwhelmed to catch the flaws in their submissions.

[darkozl]

I used it, learned the language, met my family in Calabria. Italy is amazing and so grateful to the Consulate who aided the long process

[abduco]

does this mean i can no longer qualify to be italian citizen based on my great great great great grandma's uncle's cousin's brother's daughter's citizenship?

[cssain-wg]

Spain has plenty of Latin Americans who come to Spain using their recently acquired Italian citizenship, without knowing anything about Italy or the Italian language.

[DylC-dr]

They want the Passport, not the country.

[felipeiglesias]

This has zero opposition in Italy, nor from left, centre or right. It will not create a problem of “less immigration” because most of people who request citizenship ius sanguinis are not planning to live in Italy at all. I saw a number, I don’t remember were that many of the Americans requesting Italian citizenship to live in Europe were actually planing to live in France, not Italy. And the law is not that stringent: if you are planning to live here or at least voting on the expatriate circumscription you’re all done. But nobody can reclaim “roots” to a culture you haven’t chosen interest for generations. It’s offensive for those who have chosen to live, learn the language and pay taxes in Italy to have more difficulty to acquire citizenship for someone who just have the fortune of many generations ago have someone Italian in their tree line.

[phoenix]

New Yorkers and New Jersey "Italians" be mad.

[joannemaguuire]

Both sets of grandparents came from Sicily I turned 21 there and met the relatives. Took Italian in college. Before going to the relatives I was in Rome Venice and Florence. What a great experience.

[joaovitormatos]

Something you didn't mention:

According to previous rulings by the Supreme Court, those people of Italian descent don't "acquire" citizenship, they already have it, the government simply has to acknowledge that. That change in citizenship rules would, in that sense, strip people of Italian Citizenship, something that goes against the Italian Constitution.

The government seem to have understood that, since a new bill was introduced in the senate last week that claims only people born after the law has been changed would be affected

[parkrover]

I don't know about Brazilians and Americans, but Argentinians often use the Italian passport just to go live in Spain, and that is because there is no language barrier, nothing else.

If Italy wants to prevent the abuse of the law and the "fake Italians", they should just set the limit up to Great Grandparent (or people who was born after the Stato Civile was created) and ask for a B1 level Italian certificate, a History of Italy exam and an Italian civics exam.

This way they can filter the people who just want an EU passport, and also contributes to keep and expand the Italian language and culture overseas. Also the new citizens would have better knowledge to start a new life in Italy, instead of going to other countries.

[borealisuno]

It's important to remember that Italian citizenship is interesting because it is a European citizenship: once you're Italian on paper, you can travel, reside, and work without a visa in any country of the European Union. And that, indeed, is very appealing to many...

[rufioh]

They could create a category of citizenship like we have (British overseas national) - it might allow them to put requirements like living in Italy for X years, speaking an Italian language etc. to get full citizenship, but not actually close it off.

[Bansibaghel-jj]

I almost skipped Hidden Codex of Wealth by Dorian Caine, thinking it was just another average book. Glad I didn't—this one exposed the money tactics they’re actively hiding from us.

[Aoiraider]

Lived in Italy as a teenager before smart phones, learned the language, fell in love with the culture and lifestyle, it took me years to find all the paper work, but I got everything to the Italian courts in October, months before this ruling. I’m so very happy I made it in time, as my lawyers and I found every scrap of evidence we could find. I plan on living there, working there, studying there voting there and paying taxes. The whole thing and I can’t wait.

[tomas_silva]

In Brazil there’s a literal law firm site where you request their help to get your itallian passport.
Their advertising is like “get your EU passport and free travel in Europe with no problems” or “we will get your citizenship for you”.

It’s a literal abuse

[PASTRAMIKick]

They should do an Italian language test, to demonstrate that there's some amount of interest in Italian culture

[chanpasadopolska]

I worked with couple of Argentinians with Italian passport in the Netherlands, they don't care or know much about Italy.

[jayiwa]

I saw Italy's national TV (Rai) special report recently which they interviewed the brazilians queuing up at the embassy to apply for citizenship. Most couldn't speak a word of Italian and couldn't demonstrate any basic knowledge of Italy. Some openly admitted that they only needed the passport to obtain the US visa or just to disguise themselves from being Brazilian.

That article simply gaslighted the frustration and anger among Italians and the government further, then a few days after this article was on air the new laws were enacted.

[afalcone]

Important clarifications that were overlooked:

1. According to the citizenship law, save very limited exceptions, every child born to an Italian parent acquires citizenship at birth, automatically.

2. However, citizenship is useless as long as it isn't officially "recognized" by the Italian state. Applicants don't apply for citizenship, they apply for recognition of pre-existing citizenship. This is a procedure where you prove to the Italian state that you are the child of an Italian citizen, and the result is official confirmation of a pre-existing status.

3. The difference between acquiring citizenship and getting recognition of your citizenship is extremely important, because recognition is only a confirmation that you have a right that was acquired at birth. Therefore, the new Decree-Law, by expressly denying recognition to people who were born an Italian citizen before the Decree-Law was enacted, is, effectively, retroactively depriving those people of a legal right they already had. This creates relevant questions of potential unconstitutionality of this aspect of the Decree-Law.

4. For achieving recognition, there's a simplified process for people under 18 years old, only requiring their parents to register their birth at an Italian consulate.

5. For people over 18, there's a lengthy and difficult process that involves proving more than just having an Italian parent. Even if one of your parents already has their citizenship recognized, you still have to prove that you descend from someone who was born in Italy, so you need to provide birth certificates all the way up to your great great grandfather who was born in 1850 at a small Italian town no one has ever heard of). If your father already proved the same thing when he got his citizenship recognized, you still have to do it all over again. They even require you to provide the marriage certificates of all your Italian ancestors, even though the law doesn't requires that your Italian parent/ancestor was married. This bunch of ridiculous requirements are imposed by internal rules of the Ministry of Interior, not by the law, and they don't make any sense: you should only need to prove that your father or mother is Italian. This is intentional: it's the way Italian governments limit access to Italian citizenship, circumventing their very generous citizenship law.

6. With the new Decree-Law, they're finally being honest about their intentions to limit Italian citizenship. However, it's very questionable that, in doing so, they deprive people who were born Italian of their citizenship, retroactively. Sure, the law may have been too generous, but you can't simply take back what you already gave.

7. As final commentary, Italy has an ageing population and, whether they like it or not, they need immigration to sustain the country's demographics. This reform deprives people with an Italian heritage, who are mostly South Americans, romance-speaking and with a Catholic background, and often coming from a well-educated middle to upper class, from the possibility to migrate to Italy. Rejecting the migrants that would most easily adapt to Italian culture and language will come back to bite them.