Brazil has 918.999 Italian citizens regularly registered with consulates, according to data from... Anagrafe Consolare from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (broadcasted on RAI), updated on October 31, 2025. This number places the country as the third largest Italian community in the worldItaly is second only to Argentina, which has 1.212.077 Italians.
Despite their representativeness, a significant portion of these citizens do not appear on the official lists of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, due to a discrepancy known as "MAE-MIN misalignment" — technical term used by Italian authorities to describe the inconsistency between the records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) and the Ministry of the Interior (MIN).
This discrepancy occurs when a citizen is duly registered with Italian consulates but is not linked to any Italian comune (municipality), and therefore does not appear in the database of the Ministero dell'Interno (Ministry of the Interior), which is responsible for voter registration and other civil functions.
The situation directly affects the recognition of rights, such as participation in Italian elections abroad and access to public services linked to full citizenship.
A Anagrafe ConsolareThe registry maintained by diplomatic missions is the most up-to-date register of Italians actually residing outside of Italy. It records real-world transactions, such as changes of address, transfers of consular jurisdiction, and updates to marital status.
The base of Ministry of the InteriorThe data, which should reflect this same information, depends on continuous communication between consulates and Italian municipalities. Operational problems, bureaucratic delays, and integration failures between systems cause misalignment.
Besides Brazil and Argentina, countries with large communities of Italians registered at consulates are... United Kingdom (904.970), Germany (847.251), United States (389.695) and Switzerland (505.430).
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