Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani once again defended his project to change the rules for recognizing citizenship in the country on Tuesday (11) and said that the initiative seeks to defuse a “social bomb” in the integration of children of immigrants.
“When I say that we need to start thinking about granting citizenship to young people who are not Italian citizens, after 10 years of schooling, it’s to react to a problem, because what we are proposing serves to integrate, it obliges you to go to school,” said the chancellor and leader of the conservative Forza Italia (FI) party at an event in the Chamber of Deputies in Rome.
“We need to ensure that this problem does not become a social bomb,” Tajani said. The FI bill would prevent Italians whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born outside Italy from obtaining citizenship “jus sanguinis” (“right of blood”), but without affecting processes already underway.
On the other hand, it provides for citizenship for foreigners born in Italy or who arrived in the country before their fifth birthday, but only when they turn 16 and provided they have resided on Italian soil for an uninterrupted decade and completed their school cycle up to that age.
This system was called by Tajani “jus italiae” (“Italian law”).
There is currently no generational limit for “jus sanguinis”, while children of immigrants born in Italy can only obtain citizenship after the age of 18. However, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has already indicated that the FI project is not among the government’s priorities. (HANDLE)
