The article published in Corriere della Sera, this Wednesday (29) portrays the descendants of Italians living in Brazil as an “invasion”.
The word, used right in the title — “Veneto: the invasion of descendants from Brazil” — sets the tone for the entire article: a speech laden with prejudice, generalizations, and derogatory terms. against a community that keeps its connection with Italy alive.
When prejudice makes headlines
The journalist Claudio Del Frate, from the Venetian branch, describes the search for Italian citizenship described as a "disturbing phenomenon," a "shady business" that "paralyzes" the courts and "overburdens" municipalities.
Expressions that not only distort reality, but also fuel a historical stigma against the descendants of immigrants — many of them direct heirs of Italians who fled poverty and hunger at the end of the 19th century and were welcomed in Brazil.
The journalist's rhetoric follows the classic model of media alarmism. Terms like "tsunami of requests," "young people from Brazil," and "tricks" suggest disorder, abuse, and distrust.
No concrete data supports the claim that Italian-Brazilians are responsible for fraud or judicial overburdening. On the contrary, the text itself admits that the problem involves... Administrative inefficiency and structural delays in the Italian justice system.
xenophobic Tom
Even more serious is the moral and cultural bias embedded in the article.
The descendants are portrayed as opportunistic foreigners, interested only in a “passport "to take advantage of the European social system." This generalization ignores the fact that the right to citizenship by right of blood is provided for in Italian law—a recognition of the historical and identity-related continuity between Italy and its diaspora.
Del Frate describes citizenship applications as “a risk to the objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan” (investments financed by the European Union to boost economic recovery), linking the issue of immigration to failures in the judicial system. The article suggests that the problem is not bureaucracy, but Brazilians. This shift in focus reveals an underlying bias, disguised as institutional concern.
The paradox is evident. Thousands of families with the last name Del Frate They now live in Brazil or Argentina — descendants of those who left Veneto and were welcomed in a country that, unlike Italy at the time, did not see immigrants as a threat.
Del Frate's article, therefore, not only forgets its own history, but also repeats, in reverse, the same prejudice that once victimized poor Italians who crossed the Atlantic.
The Corriere della Sera article also reinforces an exclusionary notion about who “deserves” to be Italian. By suggesting that descendants “don’t move to live in Italy” and “don’t pay taxes,” the author reduces citizenship to an economic transaction—and denies the symbolic and cultural value of belonging to a nation that, to a large extent, was rebuilt thanks to resources sent by emigrants.
The discourse of "invasion" reveals more about contemporary Italy than about Italian-Brazilians.
Show the A country's discomfort in dealing with its diaspora....related to migratory history and identity itself. Citizenship, in this context, ceases to be a right and becomes a privilege again—granted to some, denied to others, according to criteria of political convenience or social prejudice.
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