Summary
Italy granted citizenship to Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, due to his Italian ancestry, sparking outrage over the contrast with strict citizenship rules for children of migrants born in Italy.
Critics, including opposition lawmaker Riccardo Magi, called the decision discriminatory, highlighting Italy’s restrictive laws for migrants despite allowing distant descendants of Italians to claim citizenship.
Milei, who has close ties with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is in Rome for political events.
Pro-migrant groups have pushed for reforms, but Meloni’s right-wing government opposes easing citizenship laws.
I have students who were born in Italy from foreign parents and have been living in Italy their whole life, but they have to wait till they turn 18 to get Italian citizenship.
Milei gets instant citizenship because our PM has a lady boner for anarcho-capitalists.
Italy is weird about giving citizenship.
Normal foreigner? LOL in order to get citizenship you need to pass a language test, being a legal resident for decades (=paid at least 100k in taxes), with the “green card” that expires every 1-2 years but takes 6-12 months to get renewed, with requirements that change every year and the queues at the immigration office are massive (go in line at 5 am, get to the booth at 4 pm)
8 generations ago your grandpa had Italian origins? LOL just fill the form and get the citizenship, no language test required.
Basically almost all south America is eligible for an Italian passport because you just need to prove to have someone of Italian descent in your family tree, no matter how many years or generations ago. No language test, no need to find a specialized job, thanks to that 250 years old ancestor you will get:
- Unlimited Schengen travel
- Free healthcare
- Right to vote in a country that you never visited in your life
Isn’t that great?
I’m Italian and I wonder why the EU hasn’t stopped this madness yet.
The EU doesn’t have that kind of power over individual member states. It’s not like the EU is like a federal government.
I’d really like a federal EU.
Not gonna happen. Too many fundamental differences between member countries and too many very powerful anti-EU groups in the individual parliaments and in the EU Parliament. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1999 also ruled out and prohibits the idea of a federal, EU-wide citizenship. The EU will always be mainly a trade cooperation.
FlyingSquid would probably be interested in that information, if they have any Italian heritage through either their or their partner’s families.
Is it really that simple? I’ve been looking into doing this myself. I have a great grandpa that came over in the early 1900’s. It seemed very difficult and involved. Expensive as well. I was intimidated enough at the moment to not try and start the process
The problem is needing to prove it. The more far is the relative, the hardest is to get the documents
If he was born in the 1800s and all the documentation (passports from the 1900s, other stuff) is now gone, then now you need to hire some archivist that goes to find and check the handwritten records located in some remote church (the Italian government didn’t even exist at the time, birth records were held by churches) since last two centuries ago.
Of course that means that rich people can buy citizenship by finding some dishonest archivist that certifies a forged handwritten birth record and creates fake proofs of existence
I am extremely fortunate and privileged in that I have his birth and marriage certificate, as well as his parents’ certificates. According to old family stories, apparently he fled from a village in Italy that has since become a tourist attraction. Descendants of that village formed a group through the power of the internet. They actually have family trees dating back into the early 1700’s which is cool as hell. I got in contact with them recently and was given my family tree which at least to my great great grandparents on his side is accurate to some Ancestry research from about 10 years ago.
Rage quit in 3…
Hi. I have a question out of genuine curiosity. If a president is granted citizenship of another country, would that not invalidate his presidency? After all, that would have meant he has “given up” on his country to become a citizen of an “another country.”
In these cases being granted citizenship for another country means gaining “dual citizenship”, I.E. he’s a citizen of both countries and thus still eligible for presidency in Argentina.
Yeah but I was under the impression that a president / leader of a country should not have any other citizenship other than the country he is in. Today I learnt something and thank you for for taking your time to explaining it.
In some countries yes, in others no. Apparently Argentina and Italy both allow dual citizenship (i.e. he has not given up Argentine citizenship) and Argentina allows dual citizens to be president.
If he were a member of parliament in Australia, this wouldn’t be possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_44_of_the_Constitution_of_Australia#(i)_Allegiance_to_a_foreign_power
Thank you for enlightening me on how it works in the Argentinian-Italian context.
Wouldn’t most countries discourage top leaders from having things like dual citizenship?
In Sweden the far right Sweden Democrats have proposed forbidding anyone with dual citizenship from representing in parliament. Pretty rough considering Swedes often have backgrounds from all over the EU.
Would you care to cite the source of that statement? That’d be pretty significant news considering the number of dual citizens who are SD members and I haven’t seen anything about this elsewhere.
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
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If not explicitly, then at least the electorate usually dislikes it. In Canada, we had a party leader who was found to be a dual Canadian/American citizen during the 2019 election, and while I don’t think that’s the whole reason he lost, it definitely contributed.
The people that voted for milei definitely doesn’t care about that, it’s a minuscule issue compared to the rest
The basic requirement in Argentina is that you’re Roman Catholic and a citizen. That’s in the constitution.
I think you’re working on old data. According to Wikipedia:
Prior to the 1994 constitutional reform, the president and vice president were required to be Roman Catholics. This stipulation was abolished in 1994.
and
Article 89 of the Constitution detail the requirements:
Article 89. To be elected president or vice president of the Nation, it is necessary to have born in Argentine territory, or be the son of a native citizen, having been born in a country foreign; and the other qualities required to be elected senator
Article 55. The requirements to be elected senator are: to be thirty years old, to have been a citizen of the Nation for six years, enjoy an annual income of two thousand pesos or an equivalent income, and be a native of the province that chooses it, or with two years of residence immediate in it.
Being catholic is not a requirement
Atheists and induviduals from other creeds are off the table, then.
Now he has an official place to escape if things went to shit.
A reverse Nazism if you will.
Operation Pastaclip
When*
We have a long story of things going to shit and perpetrators remaining on their senator sits. He will be ok
Hilarious, italy basically prints citizenship to anyone in the rio de la plata, or anyone with basically one grandparent with italian citizenship.
Of course, they just keep getting citizenship going down the family tree, because fuck it, who doens’t want into the EU?
