Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Italian Blood Right

Tens of millions of emigrants left Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries to start new lives in foreign countries, but there is a reluctance to accept those who from other countries for a better life or to look for work.

According to official statistics, in 2012, almost 80,000 babies were born in Italy to non-Italian parents. More than 50% of immigrants are female. The law currently regulating the Italian citizenship, approved in 1992, based on the jus sanguini, or "right of blood". It gives Italian citizenship to all children born to Italian parents (or at least one of them Italian) in Italy or abroad. Each descendant of the ancestor through whom citizenship is claimed jure sanguinis could pass Italian citizenship to the next generation.

Children of immigrants born in Italy have to wait until their 18th birthday before they can apply for citizenship - but only if they were registered immediately after birth, which is not always the case if the parents do not hold a regular residence permit. If they fail to catch this opportunity, within few months they will be just as any foreign immigrant, needing a residence permit - issued on condition they can prove an income. It doesn’t matter that you were born in Italy, spent your entire life going to school in the country, spoke Italian fluently and felt as Italian as the nonna living next door — if your parents were born in another country, then you don’t have the “right of blood” and you aren’t privy to Italian citizenship at birth.

There’s an estimated 4.5 million foreign residents in Italy, which means 7.5 percent of the country’s 60 million people are immigrants, in 2013, nearly a million were children.

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