Authorities launch the attack because of a court decision: Tens of thousands of South Americans want to become Italians

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According to the law in Italy, anyone who has Italian ancestors is considered Italian. This ‘right to blood’ applies to the descendants of Italian emigrants. A decision by the highest court in Italy, the Court of Cassation in Rome, made the renaturalization process easier for about two years. This is now causing a huge flow of descendants of Italian emigrants to South America.

As “Corriere della Sera” reports, the flow of applications is increasingly endangering the authorities. In the Veneto region, for example, where a large number of Brazilians want to naturalize, the court of appeal is confronted with around 12,000 objections every year.

Applications account for 68 percent of cases

Court President Carlo Citterio is sounding the alarm: “Recognition of citizenship is automatic, even for people with very distant family ties and no contact with Italy.” According to him, naturalization applications now make up about 68 percent of the cases in his court. Citterio is therefore determined to consider a review of the procedure.

The re-naturalization of descendants of Italian emigrants also puts communities in difficulty: they have to register Brazilians, Argentinians and Venezuelans at the residents’ offices. Because a maximum of 15 family members must be registered with each naturalization application, the authorities can sometimes hardly cope with the effort.

Mayor protests

The problems are especially noticeable in small communities with small governments. The municipality of Val di Zoldo in Veneto, with 2,745 inhabitants, must include 551 Brazilians with attachments in the municipal population register. Mayor Camillo De Pellegrin: “To achieve this we would have to close the community center for six months to all other citizens.”

In protest against the attack, De Pellegrin hung a Brazilian flag at the town hall, next to the flag of Val di Zoldo, the Italian flag and the EU flag. “We will prioritize the cases of Italian-Brazilian citizens to avoid exposing the municipality to further appeals, complaints or claims for damages,” De Pellegrin said bitterly.

Source: Blick