Istat: fewer foreigners, but 'new Italians' are growing, + 4.1%

2021-10-22T11:16:52.092Z

Despite the pandemic, citizenship acquisitions increased between 2019 and 2020. The long process necessary for the definition of the requests (often prior to the acquisition of at least three years) and the digitization of the procedures have evidently countered the effects of the economic downturn found in other cases. Istat notes this in the report "Non-EU citizens in Italy. Years 2020-2021". During 2020, there were 131,803 foreigners who acquired citizenship (+ 4% compared to 2019); approximately 90% (just under 119 thousand) were previously non-EU citizens. The increase is entirely attributable to the growth in proceedings concerning men (+11,6%) while the female component is decreasing (-3%) also due to the non-negligible decrease in procurement procedures by marriage (-16.5%) which has always mainly affected women. Acquisitions by election by those born in Italy at the age of eighteen also drop (-40.2%) and those for ius sanguinis (-30.9%). In the first case, these are practices worked on by the municipalities affected by a suspension of the deadlines for the slowdown in office activities following the pandemic. In the second case, mobility from one country to another, which has become more difficult, has prevented the descendants of Italian emigrants from reaching Italy and applying for citizenship. In reverse,acquisitions by residence and - consequently - those by transmission of the right from parents to minors increased respectively by 25.7% and 5.9% compared to 2019: in 2020 almost 80% of acquisitions took place by residence (48 , 5%) or by transmission (30.3%). The Albanian natives stand out with the highest number of acquisitions, followed by Moroccans, Brazilians, Pakistanis and citizens of Bangladesh. Asylum permits decreased by 51.1% Asylum permits decreased by 51.1% compared to the previous year. In total in 2020, 13,467 new permits were registered for asylum and international protection requests (12.6% of the total number of new permits issued), according to Istat.The decrease involved all non-EU countries of main origin, but the most evident relative decrease (more than 80% compared to 2019) involved Indian and Ukrainian citizens. Even family permits, the main reason for entering our country, fell by 38.3% on the previous year and now cover almost 59% of the new permits issued. Admissions for work suffered a less intense contraction between 2019 and 2020 (-8.8%) than those due to other reasons. However, arrivals for business reasons were already at very low levels in past years. In this case, the decline is not generalized: for some of the main citizens, the relative change was largely positive, albeit within a framework of contained absolute values. This happened for arrivals from Nigeria,Pakistan and Bangladesh. Other communities also recorded an increase, albeit less evident, in new entries for work, as was the case in Ukraine and Morocco. This dynamic can be partly attributed to the results of the regularization which, although, as mentioned, has not yet fully expressed its effects, it has nevertheless had consequences for some communities. <blockquote class = "twitter-tweet"> <p lang = "it" dir = "ltr"> In the year of the pandemic, the entry of non-EU citizens collapsed: -40% new permits issued in 2020 compared to 2019 <a href = "https://twitter.com/hashtag/istat?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"> #istat </a> <a href="https://t.co/PgWfRiXEr5"> https: // t.co/PgWfRiXEr5 </a> <a href = "https://t.co/IHMS7rlFDN"> pic.twitter.com/IHMS7rlFDN </a> </p> - Istat (@istat_it) <a href = "https://twitter.com/istat_it / status / 1451477347174174745? ref_src = twsrc% 5Etfw "> October 22, 2021 </a> </blockquote> <script data-purposes =