Immigrants: there are one million "new citizens" of foreign origin in our country

• Government, Rosato: a positive orientation matures on immigrant regularization

• ECB, GDP on the rise.

  The recovery possible thanks to the contribution of immigrants

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21 October 2020 A country of immigration for almost fifty years, Italy has recorded a continuous increase in new citizens of foreign origin: more than 1 million since 2012. A number higher than that already recorded by the 2011 Census, which recorded over 670 thousand.

Yet, due to legislation that looks mainly to the past, becoming Italian for those born and trained in our country or living there for a long time is more difficult than for the descendants of Italian emigrants born abroad and who reside there ( often) permanently: overall over 2.3 million people who represent a further, important, piece of the increasingly plural profile of the national community.

This is anticipated by the 2020 Immigration Statistical Dossier, 30th edition, created by the Idos Study and Research Center in partnership with Confronti, which will be presented on 28 October.

Therefore, on an annual basis, the highest number of acquisitions of citizenship by foreigners residing in Italy was reached in 2016, when there were more than 201 thousand.

But after the drop recorded between 2017, 147 thousand people and 2018 with 112,500, in 2019 their number increased by 127 thousand units (+ 12.9%). 

Because of "legislation that looks mainly to the past - explain the authors - becoming Italian for those born and educated in our country or living there for a long time is more difficult than for the descendants of Italian emigrants born abroad and who reside there permanently: overall over 2.3 million people represent a further, important piece of the increasingly plural profile of the national community ".

Confirming advanced rooting and stabilization paths and an immigrant population composed mainly of families, among the acquisitions of resident foreigners, the weight of young people who become Italian citizens in all respects (through transmission from parents or, for those born in Italy, at the age of eighteen): almost 357,000 between 2012 and 2018, 38.2% of the total.

excluded An important number, but from which numerous minors are excluded, children of foreign citizens, but born in Italy and who carry out their life, training and socialization path in Italy, not having any personal migration experience.

An indication in this sense comes from the data on the school, where almost two thirds of all students of foreign citizenship were born in Italy: 64.5% (75.3% in primary school and 85.3% in that of infancy) while demographic data attest to almost 570 thousand "foreign births" in the country in the period 2012-2019 (of which 63 thousand in the last year, 15% of all births). 

At the same time, among the "new citizens" the number of those who, on the contrary, boasts an Italian ancestry, but whose possible presence in Italy or experience of the country are necessarily linked to a migration the case of the descendants of Italian emigrants, even from the past, born abroad but with the right to acquire the citizenship of our country 'iure sanguinis'.

In 2019, there were 9 thousand acquisitions of citizenship by descent from an Italian ancestor and 91 thousand Italians born abroad to our fellow citizens residing there.

A framework, the one described by the data, which reflects a legislative system anchored more to the past of Italy, as a 'great country of emigration', than to its present as an "important country of immigration".

It is enough to consider that the current law on citizenship, in addition to being centered on the ius sanguinis, does not provide for any barriers in the ascendancy, so a foreigner who can boast ancestors of the Peninsula even prior to the unification of Italy can acquire Italian citizenship more easily than a foreigner who, although born and raised in Italy, cannot demonstrate such ancestry.

It is a mechanism clearly detached from the demographic and social dynamics that characterize the country today and which often ends up acting as a vector of exclusion, particularly in the case of the so-called 'second generations': a growing and integral component of the national community, but still seeking recognition.