Project presented by a Lega deputy has similarities with another presented by an opponent
Members of Parliament have introduced a bill in the Italian Chamber of Deputies that, if approved, would make the process of recognizing Italian citizenship by right of blood less stringent.jus sanguinis).
The project – by Alessandro Pagano, Giulio Centemero, Dimitri Coin and Luis Roberto Lorenzato – provides for the possibility of carrying out the process in the municipality of origin of the Italian ancestor, and without the need to wait for the process to be completed in Italy.
“You go to your grandfather's city, to the city hall, open the document, and they register it. Then you decide whether you want to stay there or return to Brazil. You won’t need to lie”, says deputy Luis Roberto Lorenzato, one of the project’s authors.
He refers to those who “pretend” to take up residence in Italy to have the right to process faster than in consulates. “These people don’t go because they want to. It’s a way to get past this insurmountable queue (at consulates)”, he highlights.
The project will still have to go through the Chamber's Justice and Foreign Affairs committees.
The idea seems good, but it's not original. In 2015, senator Fausto Longo, now a deputy for the PD-Democratic Party, presented a similar, but broader project, which pointed out solutions that benefited Italian descendants and Italian institutions.
According to Longo, at the time, a procedure was formulated together with experts from the Public Servants Association, which would allow the practices to be carried out in Italy, avoiding the residency requirement and providing additional resources to municipalities and incentives to operators. In this case, the applicant simply had to send the documentation by post and wait for it to be finalized.
The AS2003 project, which can be found through this link, has not yet been evaluated.
Just like in Fausto Longo's project, deputy Lorenzato would do well to play for his electorate, but first he needs to agree the result with his colleagues on the bench, the Lega party.
Last year, a draft of a decree-law attributed to Italy's Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini – also a member of the ultranationalist Lega party – provided for the imposition of limits on the granting of jus sanguinis (right of blood) citizenship to descendants of Italians. Despite the scare, the supposed change was removed from the text that was submitted for approval, with some changes.
Despite this, Lorenzato tries to defend himself and believes he will have the necessary support from his colleagues. “Those who wanted the restriction were the candidates defeated in the elections and the Italian left”, he concludes.
Maternal citizenship
The project presented by deputy Lorenzato also foresees the expansion of the transmission of citizenship to women who married foreigners before the Constitution came into force in 1948. Currently, descendants of these women are not recognized as Italian citizens.
According to the text presented, “a woman who was a citizen by birth and lost her citizenship while married to a foreigner is a citizen, even if the marriage was contracted before January 1, 1948”.
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