Since Italy became a country in 1861, there has been a surefire way to know who is and isn’t an Italian citizen: look at their parents.
The first page of the civil code, published in 1865 as the rulebook to Europe’s newest country, declared that a child born to an Italian citizen was an Italian citizen.
This founding tenet of the Bel Paese now looks set to change — ending diaspora dreams of returning to the mother country, and meaning that Italians who move abroad risk denying citizenship to their descendants.
On Thursday the Constitutional Court said it would rule in favor of the government and its controversial 2025 law that restricted citizenship for those born abroad. The law — issued last March via emergency decree — had been challenged by four judges, who questioned its constitutionality.
Why should it stop?
Citizenship is a social contract that provides dues and benefits. If you dont live there, don’t do your dues, but remain entitled to your benefits, wouldn’t that just strain the resources available to citizens who actually are living there, doing their dues?
The only real strain on the system is that they have to record where you are and send you official documents from time to time as well as providing a way to vote from abroad. In times of crisis they may organise emergency flights to get you out of danger.
Besides that, an Italian citizen living abroad is not a large expense for the government.
If they remigrate back to Italy, they’d be entitled to education and healthcare, which are the largest Italian expenditures, without contributing to the system.
That is true if they go to Italy after retirement age or very sick. Otherwise they’ll be working in Italy as well and be paying taxes in the country.
In Norway we have 5.5 million citizens. There are roughly 6 million American citizens of Norwegian descendants. If we had the same system that would put an unbelievable strain on our country