Italian-born children "should be considered Italian"

Critics say the children of foreign nationals are being unfairly denied the right to be recognised as Italians.

ROME-- A Piedmontese town has been praised by President Giorgio Napolitano for its decision to confer honorary citizenship on 450 children born in Italy to foreign parents.

 The measure, passed by the council of Nichelino, five miles southwest of Turin, will apply to children born to foreign nationals within the municipality in the last ten years. They are following in the footsteps of Pesaro, which in February gave honorary citizenship to over 4,500 children born in the province. Town mayor Giuseppe Catizone explained that “we want to send a sign to Parliament urging them to re-examine the laws on citizenship… to ask that those born in Italy be considered Italian.”

 Honorary citizenship is a symbolic gesture and does not entitle the bearer to any legal benefits, but the council is highlighting an increasingly significant anomaly in Italy’s nationality laws. Current legislation is based on the principle of jus sanguinis, in which automatic citizenship is granted only to the children of Italian nationals. While this is favourable to persons of Italian descent wishing to claim citizenship of the republic, it means that children of immigrants, although born and raised in Italy, are obliged to apply for the right to be legally considered Italian.

 Although jus sanguinis has historically been the norm, most modern European democracies have modified their constitutions to integrate some elements of jus solis, a principle which conveys citizenship to those born on national soil. In the UK and Germany, for example, children born to foreign parents gain automatic citizenship provided that at least one parent has a valid residency permit. With immigration in the last few decades significantly changing Italy’s demography and eight per cent of children now born to foreign parents, the problems posed by the current legislation are becoming harder to ignore.

 The decision was welcomed by President Napolitano, who has long been at the forefront of the movement to reform nationality law. In an open letter to Mayor Catizone he said: “Those born in Italy are an integral part of our society… As I have mentioned on several occasions, the distress of those young people who have been born or raised in our country and yet remain ‘foreigners’ is evident.”