Per la libertà di movimento, per i diritti di cittadinanza

A comment upon the new rules concerning Italian citizenship

According to a press agency published past May 16th, the text (Testo unificato) on citizenship concession will reach Parliament. A new rule on citizenship was proposed, proposals imply some changes to law 91/92 that concerns citizens.

This proposal implies the reduction of time, in fact law 91/92 on naturalisation provides for ten years of regular continuous stay in Italy. This reduction to 8 years may be somehow useful. We are specifically referring to children that were born in Italy but whose parents are not Italian.

Actual law provides for that foreign citizens that were born in Italy have the right to be recognised Italian when the turn 18, but before their 19th birthday. This means that they have only one year to be naturalised Italian.
Theoretically speaking these citizens could apply to Italian citizenship before, in fact law provides for that after 10 years of regular stay foreigners can apply to naturalisation.
In spite of this we unfortunately know that naturalisation is discretionally granted and income is a very important element. Therefore minors are very hardly naturalised in lack of an autonomous income.
This new proposal would allow quicker naturalisation to foreign children that were born in Italy.
We are talking about a proposal, which has already met difficulties. Institutional opposition believes that this proposal is rather reductive and it proposes that naturalisation law is wholly re-organised whereas actual institutional majority does not agree on the matter, Alleanza nazionale did not take part to parliamentary discussions. The text we are today talking about may not be approved of, it may be another failure…

Italian citizenship: marriages between Italian and foreign citizens
The last part of the quoted proposal aims to change rules concerning marriages between Italian and foreign citizens and their naturalisation. The proposal says that foreigners should be allowed to Italian citizenship only after two years of stay in Italy whereas actual law says that they can apply to naturalisation after six month of stay as a consequence of marriage. This part of the proposal is rather ridiculous because we have always denounced that statistics say that foreigners applying to naturalisation as a consequence of marriage – and we are talking about a right these citizens have, naturalisation is not discretional in case of marriage – have to wait for two to three years before proceedings are over.