Lost Citizenship, Lost Home: How Italy’s New Rules Shattered the Dreams of Foreign-Born Italian Descendants
“I encourage everyone on this call to really understand where you come from, because where you come from is such a key part of who you are”. It was October, and as a cool afternoon breeze drifted through my bedroom window, I leaned forward towards my purple, Microsoft teams meeting screen as each of my coworkers took turns contributing to our all-hands meeting. Having supported the COVID response in public health since it began, I was beyond burnt out. More than being tired from work, COVID had broken down my identity, the person who I thought I was- an Italian American west coaster who believed in making a difference in the world. I supported Tribes during this time, and did the necessary work of learning about the history between Tribes and the U.S. government going all the way back to before European contact. This changed the way I look at the U.S. and the place I grew up in that, while I am American, the history of our country is so short compared to the rest of the world. There is indigenous history that goes back very far in the Americas, but it doesn’t include my ancestors. In Italy, there are thousands of years of history and culture that exist that are equally part of my history, even though I hadn’t had the chance to learn as much about it as I would have liked. As we wrapped up our all-hands call that I realized how much it made sense to start exploring where I came from. That weekend I booked a ticket to Italy and put in my request for my first vacation since the pandemic had started.
It's safe to say I have always identified with my Italian heritage. From the age of seven, I’ve made homemade pasta every Christmas with my family, a tradition my father felt important for us to carry on. Just before the holidays, our kitchen transformed into nothing short of a tortellini sweat-shop, me an my siblings filling triangles of pasta dough with a pork and beef nutmeg spiced mixture and twisting them into little hat shapes, dad going through like a manager on a factory line pulling out the too large or unsealed ones and asking with a big grin ‘Hey! Who did this one??”. While I was embarrassed of them as a teenager but are now in vogue, I have bushy, full, Italian eyebrows. I have had the email address that contains the phrase italiangirlalways since I was fifteen. Italian girl always. Right. That was me.
During my trip to Rome and Tuscany, I found myself accompanied by two unexpected visitors, heartbreak and grief. As I looked up at the sculptures in the Trevi fountain, surveyed the underground chambers in the Colosseum, walked through the painting that is Florence, and stepped into the church in Sienna I felt an aching for this place that I had never known, but somehow felt severely homesick for. I mourned the life in Italy I might have lived where I got to see everyday the history and great works contributed by Italian scholars, composers, philosophers, and painters. Was I related to some of them? Did they walk these same streets in Florence? I mused like this most evenings over a glass of wine.
As I left to return to the United States, I knew this trip would be the first of many as I began to learn about all the hidden treasures Italy held. Never being able to shake the homesickness for Italy, in 2023 I began the process of researching if I qualified for Italian citizenship. I did a lot of reading online, and self-research into my family tree to understand who my ancestors were and when they arrived in North America. The next step was contacting an immigration law firm, one of many, that offered a free assessment to determine if I qualified for citizenship which, after much investigation, it turns out I did. Coming from two different Italian blood lines, I was not eligible to apply through my great grandmother who was born in Italy and came to the U.S. when she was five given that her father naturalized when she was fifteen, causing her to automatically lose her Italian citizenship. This is known as the “minor issue” in Italy and recently the courts have confirmed that citizenship cases made based off of these situations can be rejected as Italy has cracked down on immigration.
Luckily, I also have another Italian line going back almost four generations. My great great grandfather and grandmother were both from Italy, and in the event that my grandfather naturalized I would qualify for a 1948 citizenship case through my grandmother, as the Italian courts have ruled that married women who automatically lost their citizenship when their husbands naturalized were able to transmit their citizenship to their children, but this must be filed in the court system in Italy.
Going through this line, even though several generations back, was determined to be my best path forward, so I began gathering documents. The law firm had quoted me roughly $12,000 for their assistance, not including fees for requesting documents, and an additional $1500 for each additional family member. In total, my family would have been looking at paying upwards of $20,000, a steep price to pay for something that was supposed to be by birthright. While I’m not against anyone making a living, there is an entire for-profit industry that has arisen as more Italian born descendants looked into obtaining citizenship. I decided I would do my best to gather documents and follow the steps outlined by the consulate website the best I could on my own, before moving forward with the fees. Afterall, I had been laid off and had previous experience gathering documents and authentications for work abroad so why not give DIY a go?
It turned out to be an arduous process involving submitting requests to multiple agencies, including a genealogy search to USCIS who would officially issue documentation on when or whether my ancestor had naturalized. This index search took almost 1 year for them to complete and in the meantime, I began the task of gathering birth, death, and marriage licenses for everyone in my family line going all the way back to the mid 1800s, working to correct inaccuracies, and gathering other documents. By March of this year, I had almost completed gathering everything, only to face the next hurdle: getting an appointment at a consulate.
Since the pandemic there has been a huge surge in individuals applying for dual citizenship and as a result, Italian consulates have been overrun with appointment requests for citizenship applications, making fulfilling their other duties challenging. In short: there were no appointments for more than 2 years and as a result I decided I would move forward with an immigration firm to try and speed things up by applying in Italy. Fast forward to this morning. I opened my laptop to finish completing some paperwork when I stumbled upon an article discussing a newly issued decree spearheaded by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Under the previous rules, anyone who could prove an unbroken line going back to 1861 (when Italy became a kingdom) qualified. Under the new decree, only those with a parent or grandparent born in Italy would qualify automatically for citizenship.
My hopes, my dreams, my chance
Gone in an instant.
As I was slogging through all of the paperwork, the confusing legal requirements, the bureaucratic barriers, I always felt a burning flame of hope: all of this was going to end with me being able to move to Italy and learn about all of the things I’d missed growing up in the states. I imagined my future children chattering away in Italian and maybe I would start a business teaching or cooking American style barbecue. The process was about so much more than gaining citizenship: it was a chance to finally come home to my old home, the place I was really from.
I realize Italy has faced a great deal of challenges in recent years with immigration, including a large influx of individuals seeking citizenship, and that so many people have taken advantage of the generous Jure Sanguinis (by blood) laws. I plan to write to the Italian American Congressional Delegation to see if anyone there can make a case with those in the Italian government on the matter of the new decree and modifications that can be made before it becomes a permanent law in 60 days.
I’m sure there are a lot of born and raised Italians that feel people like me aren’t really Italian anymore, given that we don’t speak the language or understand the politics and culture. What business do we have claiming citizenship?
If I could speak to those people, I would ask them to please give me a chance to come to Italy, to contribute to Italian society, to have the privilege of learning the language of my ancestors, to help revitalize old places affected by decline. Give me this chance and I will give my all to my beauty, my love, my Italia.
