In the picturesque town of Zoldo Valley, located 115 kilometers from Venice, a curious scene is attracting attention.
Mayor Camillo De Pellegrin decided to express his frustration at the notable increase in applications for Italian citizenship from Brazil. In a surprising move, he raised the Brazilian flag alongside the traditional Italian, European Community and municipality flags.
With more than almost 500 pending cases — some from 2018 and 2019 — the local administration appears to be facing a considerable volume for a small structure, leading the municipal leader to a peculiar attitude of protest.
In addition to raising the Brazilian symbol on the facade of the city hall, the city was temporarily renamed “Comune di Val di Zoldo del Brasile, Stato del Rio Grande do Sul”, in an ironic touch to the situation.
The mayor, when publicly announcing his decision, made it clear that he will give priority to the demands of Italian-Brazilian citizens to avoid possible legal complications. He expressed his intention to initially address applications for citizenship by blood descent, aligning with the guidelines established by the State.
Created in 2016 from the joining of the municipalities of Forno di Zoldo and Zoldo Alto, Zoldo Valley it has just over 3 thousand residents, and has 1.600 members registered in AIRE, the Register of Italians Resident Abroad.
Root of the problem
We translated the mayor's outburst, published in your account on Facebook account, which has more than 5.500 followers:
******
Priority will be given to the processes of Italian-Brazilian citizens to avoid exposing the community to possible appeals, complaints or requests for compensation.
We will first deal with bloodright citizenships and then with our residents as determined by the State. Comune di Val di Zoldo del Brasile, State of Rio Grande do Sul.
We will also raise the Brazilian flag. In practice, the civil status, civil registration and electoral departments will work predominantly for this country, no longer primarily for Italian citizens, to the detriment of the efficiency of services for the latter.
There are 551 civil registrations from abroad awaiting transcription. The oldest requests date back to 2018–2019.
This accumulation has grown exponentially since citizenship by right of blood, a significant matter not always aligned with legality, can be recognized judicially instead of administratively, through the Italian consulate abroad, as would normally be the case.
The reason? At the consulate, the wait for recognition of Italian citizenship by right of blood is decades long, leading to the shrewd strategy of seeking recognition through an Italian court, bypassing the consular queue, for those who have the resources to appoint a lawyer in Italy.
The result is that municipalities are burdened with transcribing dozens of birth, marriage, divorce and death records. And then they need to be registered with AIRE and on the electoral lists… and so on. This occurs continuously.
The mailman arrives and delivers the package containing the court order, usually from Rome, along with a written order for its execution.
So, what do we do? We tried to remedy it, chasing the subpoenas from lawyers who threatened with charges for omission of official acts, compensation and appeals for lack of transcripts.
However, as there are not only Brazilian processes to manage, we are left behind, and eventually the appeal arrives, as just happened in Val di Zoldo with an appeal to the TAR for non-compliance with a sentence.
It is yet another scandal related to iure sanguinis. And it is certainly not a problem exclusive to Val di Zoldo, dozens and dozens of municipalities are overwhelmed with these processes.
Will someone, at some point, look for the “root” of the problem?
FOLLOW ITALIANISM
