Charles F. Says:
How do I go about becoming an Italian citizen? I have a grandparent that was from Italy.
Global Diversification Expert Ted Baumann Says:
Hi Charles,
Italy has the friendliest ancestral citizenship law in Europe. Unlike other countries, it doesn’t specify the number of generations eligible for an ancestral citizenship. It’s all about dates.
Before 1861, Italy had been a patchwork of various states and territories. On March 17th, 1861, the entire peninsula along with Sardinia and Sicily was declared the Kingdom of Italy. Before that, there were no “Italian citizens” as Italy was not a nation. Everyone alive in the territory on that day immediately became an Italian citizen.
The first step in determining whether you’re eligible to become an Italian citizen by descent is to confirm that your oldest Italian ancestor was alive on or after March 17, 1861. It doesn’t matter whether that was a grandparent, great grandparent, or even great-great grandparent.
Italy recognizes citizenship by jus sanguinis, “right of blood.” Under Italian law, citizenship is transmitted to the child of an Italian citizen no matter where that child is born. As long as the Italian parent is an Italian citizen, the child acquires citizenship as well. If that child has children of his or her own, they are also entitled to claim Italian citizenship even if their parent never formally did so. This transmission of citizenship continues down to the present.
(There is one exception to this: children of Italians who became a naturalized citizen of another country before June 12, 1912 were ineligible for Italian citizenship, even if they were born before their parent was still an Italian citizen.)
This is where things get tricky. To claim Italian citizenship by ancestry, none your ancestors can have voluntarily naturalized as a citizen of another country before the birth of their child. Doing so breaks the chain of Italian citizenship. Here are two examples:
- Your great grandparent was born in the 1870s. He emigrated to the United States in the 1910s, but never bothered to become a naturalized citizen. Your grandparent was born in the US when your great grandparent was still an Italian citizen. He therefore had the right to Italian citizenship as well. Your grandparent became a US citizen at birth, but as long as they never formally renounced their Italian citizenship, they remained an Italian citizen. Your parent was born in the 1930s. Because your grandparent never renounced their Italian citizenship, your parent was also Italian. That makes you eligible for an Italian citizenship and passport.
- Your great-grandparent born in the 1870s emigrated to the US, but never naturalized. But your grandparent was told that to naturalize as US citizen, they would have to renounce their Italian citizenship. (This is something American immigration officials often did, even though it wasn’t legally necessary.) They did so. Therefore, your parent, and you by extension, are ineligible for Italian citizenship because the chain of citizenship has been broken.
The key thing to understand here is that, although your Italian ancestors may have become US citizens by birth, unless they took the official step of renouncing their Italian citizenship—which most people did not because they didn’t know about it—the chain of ancestry and citizenship continues.
To complicate matters further, before 1948, Italian ancestry could only be passed down through the male line. Technically, you can only claim ancestral citizenship through the female line if you or your ancestor were born to an Italian mother after January 1st that year. But that discrimination by gender violates the European Union Constitution. So many applicants for ancestral citizenship of Italy via a female ancestor go to an Italian magistrate court claiming citizenship in defiance of the 1948 law. They are almost always successful.
This is a complicated process that relies on access to the necessary documentation. Most people find that pursuing Italian ancestral citizenship requires the services of specialized consultants who know how to do these things, of which there are many.
For ongoing support regarding dual citizenship and global diversification, I invite you to join my Global Citizen service.
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