New Italian citizens, 190,000 applications for blood rights granted in 2023

Underlying the numbers is the fact that Italian law allows the recognition of citizenship by right of blood without generational limits: in practice, it can be obtained by tracing the family tree and claiming the presence of an Italian ancestor.

There are no other requirements because, unlike citizenship by residence or marriage, it is a matter of establishing a right. Nor is it necessary to reside in Italy, as most new citizens by descent are abroad.

A situation that has led the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, to speak of the "need to review the rule that grants citizenship by right of blood", emphasising that "in many cases these are people who only want a passport". Even more so given that the Italian passport is the second strongest in the world (it allows visa-free access to 192 countries) after that of Singapore (Passport Index by Henley & Partners on Iata data).

The exploit of proceedings by descent goes hand in hand with a more general increase in acquisitions of citizenship by non-EU citizens, regularly residing in our country, already photographed by official statistics in recent years. Net of ius sanguinis practices, in fact, in 2023 the offices recorded 169,689 acquisitions, fairly stable compared to 2022 (173,891) but a marked increase compared to those recorded in the two-year period 2017-2018 (when 127,603 and 94,557 were granted respectively).

Today's numbers reflect dynamics related to migration flows in recent years, as well as the outcome of the latest amnesty measures approved at the national level for the emersion of people who were already living and working in the country as irregular immigrants. In today's numbers, in practice, there is the effect of the 2009 amnesty, reserved for domestic helpers and carers, on the occasion of which 300,000 applications were submitted. Italian citizenship by naturalisation, in fact, can be requested after ten years of legal residence in Italy. And so yesterday's numbers now translate into about 80 thousand acquisitions per year, in line between 2022 and 2023.

A significant share of acquisitions also concerns those of minors obtained by transmission from their parents (more than 59,000 in 2023): together with those by residence, they cover almost 70% of the total acquisitions recorded by Italian registry offices. This is followed by acquisitions by marriage, which are also possible, for instance, by 'attaching' oneself to a naturalised spouse (therefore, always to a family member): last year, there were 22,330 in Italy, against about 17,000 in 2022. Proceedings by election at the age of 18 of foreign citizens born in Italy also grew, though less, from less than 8 thousand in 2021 to almost 11 thousand in 2023.

There were almost one million 625,000 citizens of non-EU origin in Italy (85% of regular foreigners) on 31 December 2023. More than a quarter of those who have acquired Italian citizenship (26%) live permanently in Lombardy. The case of Argentines stands out, whose acquisitions - mostly through descent from an Italian ancestor - have quadrupled from less than 4 thousand in 2021 to over 16 thousand in 2023. The acquisitions of Egyptians are also growing, mainly by minors and by residency, as well as those of Ukrainian women who obtain it by marriage (36% of the releases by marriage in 2023).