Citizenship by merit: the League's racist law that humiliates a million Italians

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Saturday 7 December 2025. While the’Italy is preparing for the Immaculate Conception, the League announces in the Chamber of Deputies that it has deposited a bill. This is no ordinary proposal: it's yet another tightening of the screws on those born in this country but who don't have the “good fortune” of having Italian parents. A citizenship law: with the aim of denying it.

The proposal bears the signatures of group leader Riccardo Molinari and MPs Jacopo Morrone, Giorgia Andreuzza, Ingrid Bisa and Elena Maccanti. And it states: from now on, it will not be enough to have been born here. It will not be enough to have lived here your whole life. It will not be enough to speak Italian, think in Italian, dream in Italian. You will have to pass an exam. An “integration test,” they call it. To prove that you are Italian enough. That you know “the minimum social and legal rules.” That you deserve to be recognised as who you already are.

But there’s more. The waiting times are getting longer. From three to ten years for those born in Italy. From two to four years for those with an Italian parent. And new grounds for revoking citizenship are being introduced, an arsenal of reasons to take away even that which, perhaps, one day, after years of waiting, will be granted to you.

Leggete bene questa proposta. Leggetela come se foste Sara, nata a Roma diciotto anni fa. Leggetela come se foste Ahmed, nato a Milano, cresciuto a pane e Nutella e dialetto meneghino. Leggetela come se foste Fatima, che ha fatto le elementari, le medie, le superiori qui, che conosce l’Italia meglio di tanti italiani “di sangue” che non hanno mai messo piede fuori dal loro paesino.

This proposal tells them: you are not enough. You never will be. Because the problem isn't what you know, what you feel, who you are. The problem is who you were born to.

È il 2025. Sono passati trentatré anni dalla legge che regola la cittadinanza in Italia. Trentatré anni in cui il paese è cambiato radicalmente, in cui l’immigrazione è diventata strutturale, in cui nelle scuole italiane siedono quasi un milione di studenti stranieri. E la risposta politica di una parte del paese non è aprire, includere, riconoscere. È chiudere. Inasprire. Escludere ancora di più.

There is something profoundly unjust about all this. Something that goes beyond politics, beyond electoral strategies, beyond polls. It is an existential injustice, striking at the very heart of the identity of hundreds of thousands of young people. Telling them: this is not your home. It never will be, truly.

And perhaps now is the time to look back, to understand how we got here, to retrace the history of an exclusion that has lasted too long.

“Second Generation”: the label that divides

Before even telling this story, let's pause for a moment on an expression. “Second generation.” Two words that sound technical, almost bureaucratic. But really listen to them: second. Not first, never first. As if there were a hierarchy of belonging, a gradation of being Italian. As if those born to foreign parents must necessarily carry the burden of an origin that precedes them, that defines them, that relegates them to a lower rung on the imaginary ladder of Italianness.

It's an expression that already contains exclusion within itself, crystallising in language the impossibility of being fully part of the whole. They are not “Italians,” they are “second generations.” They are not “our children,” they are “children of immigrants.” As if Italy were a house whose keys are owned by others, while they can only look in from the windows, press their noses against the glass, wishing to enter.

Eppure questi ragazzi parlano in dialetto romanesco o milanese o napoletano. Conoscono a memoria le canzoni di Sanremo, tifano per la Nazionale, litigano su chi fa la pizza migliore. Sono cresciuti tra i banchi delle stesse scuole, hanno giocato negli stessi cortili, hanno pianto e riso davanti agli stessi film. Ma quando compiono diciotto anni, scoprono che tutto questo non basta. Scoprono che essere italiani non è una questione di cuore, di lingua, di cultura, di memoria condivisa. È una questione di sangue.

And now, with the Lega's proposal, they discover that even blood might not be enough anymore. That they might have to undergo a test to prove they are worthy of a country that is the only one they know.

The law that looks to the past

The history of Italian citizenship is the history of a country that looks back. Law 91 of 1992, still in force today, carries within its DNA the imprint of an era that no longer exists. It was conceived in an Italy that was still a land of emigrants, not immigrants. An Italy that wanted to maintain ties with its children scattered throughout the world, with the descendants of those who had left a hundred years earlier for Argentina or the United States. And so it chose the right of blood, ...the right of blood: you are Italian if you are born to Italians, regardless of where in the world you are born.

It's a law that allows an Argentinian who has never seen Italy, who doesn't speak a word of Italian, to obtain an Italian passport thanks to a great-grandfather who emigrated from Naples in 1900. But it denies citizenship to a girl who was born in Milan, who studied all of her primary, middle, and high school years in Italian, who dreams in Italian, who feels Italian in every fibre of her being.

The paradox is stark, almost grotesque. But it is the paradox of a country that struggles to recognise that it has changed, that the world has changed, that immigration is no longer an emergency but a structural reality of Italian society.

And the paradox becomes even more evident if we look at history. Because the 1992 law is even more restrictive than the one it replaced: Law 555 of 1912. That old law, conceived in an Italy still monarchical, did indeed provide for the right of blood to a fundamental principle, but also recognised – albeit in a residual form – the right of soil. Article 1, point 3, stated that a citizen by birth was “anyone born in the Kingdom if both parents are either unknown or do not hold Italian citizenship, nor that of another State, or if the child does not follow the citizenship of foreign parents according to the law of the State to which they belong.”.

It was a limited form of ius soli, certainly. It primarily served to prevent statelessness, to guarantee that no one remained without citizenship. But the principle was there: being born in Italy could, in certain cases, make you Italian. In 1912. One hundred and thirteen years ago. In a monarchical, colonial Italy, very different from today's.

The 1992 law, however, also abolished this residual possibility. It opted for a pure and simple *ius sanguinis*. As if one's place of birth counted for nothing. As if growing up in a country, speaking its language, and sharing its culture held no weight compared to the biological fact of lineage.

It’s a regression, not progress. It’s an Italy that in 1992 decided to be more closed off than it was in 1912.

It was understood as early as the late nineties that the 1992 law was inadequate. But Italy, as a whole, refused to see. Or perhaps it did see and chose to look the other way.

And now, instead of correcting this inadequacy, instead of finally recognising as Italians those who were born and raised here, the League proposes to make everything even more difficult. To raise the wall further.

The injustice of asking for a test from someone born here

Proviamo a immaginare la scena. Sara ha diciotto anni. È nata all’ospedale San Giovanni di Roma. Ha frequentato l’asilo nido comunale, la scuola dell’infanzia Montessori, le elementari Manzoni, le medie Visconti, il liceo classico Tasso. Ha studiato Dante, Manzoni, Leopardi. Ha imparato la storia d’Italia, la geografia d’Italia, l’educazione civica. Ha fatto interrogazioni, verifiche, esami. Per diciotto anni ha dimostrato, banco dopo banco, di conoscere l’Italia probabilmente meglio di molti coetanei con passaporto italiano che hanno passato le scuole superiori a copiare e disinteressarsi.

And now they tell her: it's not enough. You have to take another exam. An “integration test”. You have to prove you know the “minimum social and legal rules”. As if eighteen years of life here, of school here, of growing up here, were not already the most obvious proof of integration one could ask for.

It's absurd. It's like telling a fish it needs to prove it can swim, or a bird it can fly. Sara is Italian. She doesn't need to prove it. She is so in her gestures, her words, her thoughts, her dreams. She is so in that natural, instinctive way that isn't learned from books but is absorbed through living.

And yet, no. She will have to appear before a commission, she will have to answer questions about a country that is hers, she will have to prove what is evident. And meanwhile, even if lately the laws on right of blood have also been tightened, for those with Italian grandparents, the law of descent continues to apply.

This is the Italy that the League is proposing. An Italy where belonging is measured by blood and by exams, not by lived life. An Italy where those born here are worth less than those born elsewhere but have the right ancestors.

The tightening of times: punishing those born Italian

But the League's proposal doesn't stop at examination. It also extends the timelines. And it does so in a particularly cruel way precisely for those born in Italy.

Currently, someone born in Italy to foreign parents must wait eighteen years and can apply for citizenship up to the age of nineteen. With the Lega's proposal, the required period of residency changes from three to ten years. Ten years. For those born here.

Stop and think about it for a moment. You're telling a person born in Italy that they have to prove ten years of residency in the country where they were born. It's a Nonsense A matter of logic before it is one of law. How do you “reside” in a place if you were born there? Residence implies movement, arrival, a choice. But these young people haven't arrived. They have always been here. This is their only country.

And yet the proposal says: it's not enough to be born here. You also have to have resided here for ten years. As if birth were a negligible detail, as if you had to earn the right to belong to the place you come from.

It is an injustice that strikes at the heart. Because it says to these young people: the place of your birth is not truly your home. You have to earn it. You have to prove you are worthy of it. Whereas your classmates, those born to Italian parents, have had all of this automatically, without doing anything, without proving anything, just by the chance of having the right parents.

And this doesn't just apply to those born in Italy. Even for those with an Italian parent, the timescales double from two to four years. Here too, the message is clear: it's not enough to have blood ties if these ties aren't “pure” enough. If your mother is Italian but your father is foreign, you have to wait twice as long. As if citizenship were a matter of percentages, of degrees of purity.

The proposal then introduces an arsenal of new grounds for revocation. A conviction exceeding five years, or even just three years for certain offences, and your citizenship is stripped away. Even if you were born here. Even if it's the only country you know. Even if stripping you of Italian citizenship means rendering you stateless, without a country.

It is a vision of citizenship as a temporary, revocable, conditional privilege, not as a fundamental right, but as a concession that the State can withdraw at any time. It is citizenship as a leash: if you behave, we'll let you keep it. If you misbehave, we'll take it away.

But citizenship is not – should not be – a reward for good behaviour. It is the recognition of belonging, of a bond that goes beyond individual conduct. It is telling a person: this is your place in the world. This is where you belong. Forever, unconditionally.

Thirty years of failed reforms

The history of attempts to reform citizenship in Italy is a story of dashed hopes, of doors that open only to close again, of promises that vanish into thin air.

In 2004, the Community of Sant’Egidio launched the “Children of Italy” campaign. A simple, direct name. Because that's what it’s about: children who are of Italy, who belong to this country just as much as any other Italian child. But even then, the wall was high.

In 2006, minister Giuliano Amato tried. Polls said Italians were in favour. But the opposition put up a wall. The issue is too divisive, they said. It's not the right time, they always said.

In 2011, “L'Italia sono anch'io” (Italy is me) was launched, a petition that involved thousands of people, associations, and ordinary citizens who felt the urgency to change an unfair law. The text reached Parliament. Hope was ignited.

October 13, 2015, is an important day. The House approves a reform that provides for the right of soil temperate and the Culture law. It's not pure 'ius soli' – the type where simply being born in Italy makes you Italian – but it's still a significant step forward. Children born in Italy to parents with long-term residency permits could finally become Italian. And also those who arrived as children and have attended Italian schools for at least five years.

Per due anni il testo rimane bloccato al Senato. Due anni in cui la speranza si trasforma in attesa, l’attesa in frustrazione. Nel frattempo il dibattito pubblico si avvelena. Gli sbarchi dalla Libya aumentano, l’immigrazione diventa il tema dominante della politica italiana, e la riforma della cittadinanza viene trascinata in questo vortice.

Il 23 dicembre 2017 è il giorno della resa. Al Senato manca il numero legale per votare. Su 319 senatori ne sono presenti solo 116. Assenti tutti i 35 senatori del Movimento 5 Stars, molti di Forza Italia, perfino 29 parlamentari del Pd su 89. La riforma muore così, nell’indifferenza, nel silenzio complice di chi non ha il coraggio di votare né sì né no, ma sceglie semplicemente di non esserci.

“It has definitely foundered. Hit and sunk. Dead and buried,” rules Roberto Calderoli of the Lega. And along with the reform, the hopes of hundreds of thousands of young people have foundered.

Since then, there have been other attempts. Other proposals. Other announcements. In 2018, in 2019, in 2022, in 2024. Each time the process stalls. Each time the promises prove empty. Each time these young people understand that they are not important enough, that their rights can wait, that their existence is held hostage by electoral calculations.

Lives on hold

Let's try to step into one of these lives. Imagine Sara. She was born in Rome in 2006 to Moroccan parents. She attended nursery, Manzoni primary school, and Visconti middle school. She did classical ballet. She cried when Italy was knocked out of the World Cup. She has a best friend named Giulia. They talk on the phone for hours. They dream of doing Erasmus together.

Sara is 18 years old. She has passed her final school exams. She would like to enrol in Political Science. She dreams of working in the field of human rights. But she is not Italian. She can apply for citizenship now that she is an adult, but she will have to wait years for a response. In the meantime, she is in limbo.

Vuole andare all’estero con la scuola per un progetto? Deve richiedere il visto, come se fosse una turista marocchina qualsiasi, anche se non è mai stata in Marocco. Vuole partecipare a un concorso pubblico? Non può, molti sono riservati ai cittadini italiani. Vuole votare per decidere chi governerà il paese in cui è nata e cresciuta? Non può.

Sara has two passports in her drawer: the Moroccan one, which she was given at birth for one right of blood which she herself finds absurd (how can she be Moroccan if she doesn't speak Arabic, if she doesn't know Moroccan culture except through her parents' stories?), and the Italian one which will never arrive, or will arrive too late, when she will have already learned to feel like a foreigner in her own country.

Every time she has to show her documents, Sara prepares for the question: “But were you born here?”. “Yes”, she replies. “Then why...?”. How do you explain, every time, that the country you were born in doesn't recognise you? How do you live knowing that all your friends have rights that you don't have?

The consequences of this exclusion are not merely practical and bureaucratic; they are profoundly psychological. When a young person is told, implicitly or explicitly, that they do not fully belong to the place where they were born and raised, an identity crisis is created that can be devastating.

Psychologists talk about The feeling of being a stranger in one's own home. These children belong neither fully to the country of origin of their parents – which they have often never seen, whose language they do not speak, whose cultural codes they do not know – nor to Italy, which rejects them legally even when it accepts them socially.

They live in a `land of nod`. They are too Italian to be considered Moroccan, Chinese, or Albanian by their cousins living in their countries of origin. But they are too foreign to be considered fully Italian by the Italian state.

Questa doppia esclusione genera un senso di sradicamento, di non appartenenza che può sfociare in problemi di autostima, di identità, in alcuni casi in depressione. Come costruisci la tua identità quando ti viene costantemente ricordato che sei “altro”, che sei “diverso”, che non sei “abbastanza”?

And then there's the anger. The legitimate anger of those who see fundamental rights denied to them because of a bureaucratic detail. The anger of those who see less able, less integrated classmates automatically obtain at birth what you will never obtain. The anger of those who discover that being Italian doesn't depend on how much you love this country, but on who your grandparents were.

Questa rabbia può trasformarsi in disaffezione, in distacco. Perché dovrei sentirmi parte di un Paese che non mi vuole? Perché dovrei impegnarmi per una comunità che mi esclude? È così che si creano cittadini di serie B, che si costruiscono muri invisibili ma altissimi, che si alimenta il risentimento sociale.

The paradox of incomplete democracy

There is also an exquisitely political dimension to this exclusion. One million foreign minors live in Italy. In a few years, they will be young adults. They will work, pay taxes, and contribute to Italian society. But many of them will not be able to vote. They will not be able to choose who governs them. They will not be able to have their say on pensions, healthcare, schools, or work.

It is a crippled, incomplete democracy. A democracy that excludes a significant portion of its inhabitants from political participation. And this exclusion has concrete consequences: without the vote of these citizens in fact but not in law, political parties have no incentive to listen to them, to consider their needs, to represent their interests.

This creates a vicious circle: they have no rights because they don't vote, and they don't vote because they have no rights. Meanwhile, these young people see that Italy grants citizenship after generations to those who only have one Italian grandparent, but denies it to those who have built Italy day after day, school desk after school desk.

The message is clear, and cruel: you can only be Italian if you are born Italian. Everything else doesn't matter.

More than 800,000 students with foreign citizenship attend Italian schools. One in ten. They sit at the same desks, study the same books, take the same exams. But when they leave school, they discover that their diploma is worth less. Not because it is less valid, but because they are worth less, in the eyes of the law.

If the referendum reform proposed in 2025 had been approved – the one that reduced the required residency period for citizenship applications from 10 to 5 years – approximately 1.4 million people could have become Italian. 1.4 million. These are not abstract numbers. These are people. These are lives. They are Ahmeds who want to be doctors, Fatimas who dream of becoming engineers, Chens who love Italian literature, Aishas who support Roma, Drisses who play in the neighbourhood band.

But the referendum in June 2025 failed to reach the quorum. Only 30% of those eligible to vote cast their ballots. Of those who voted, 65% voted ‘yes’. But it wasn’t enough. And so these lives remain in limbo, these rights remain denied, these hopes remain dashed.

And it is precisely here, precisely on these dashed hopes, that the League's proposal arrives. Like a Football to those already on the ground. In other words: not only are we not giving you what you asked for, but we're making everything even more difficult. Not only are we closing the door you wanted to open, but we're also putting a padlock on it.

The betrayed referendum: when 65% doesn’t count

The League justifies its proposal with the referendum. “The results of the June citizenship referendum,” they write in the report on the text, “along with polls and daily listening to citizens in streets and squares, allow us to state that Italians consider the status of citizen an important recognition, to be granted only to foreigners residing in the national territory who prove they deserve it.”.

This interpretation requires a considerable feat of logical acrobatics. It is true that the referendum failed to reach the quorum. But it was not rejected on its merits. There was no majority of Italians who voted ‘no’. There was a high abstention rate. And amongst those who did vote – those who took the trouble to go to the polls and express an opinion – 65% said ‘yes’. Two out of three voters wanted to reduce the time taken to obtain citizenship.

But the League reads the failure of the quorum as a mandate to do the exact opposite. Not only to maintain the current rules, but to tighten them. It's as if someone were to say: “Given that few people voted, let's interpret the majority's silence as enthusiastic approval of our most extreme positions.”.

It's a political, instrumental read, which uses the democratic failure of the referendum – the low turnout – as an excuse to go in the opposite direction to what those who participated wanted. It's saying: since the majority didn't express themselves, we'll decide. And we've decided to close things down even more.

That 'daily listening to citizens in the streets and squares” sounds like a vague, unverifiable justification, serving to legitimise decisions that have already been made. Because if the country had truly been listened to, attention would also have been paid to the 65% of those who voted ”yes’. They should have listened to the young people born here who have been waiting for years. They should have listened to those in schools who see integration working every day, and to those in the workplace who see foreigners and Italians building this country together.

But these voices are not heard. Or rather, they are heard and ignored. Because the narrative is already written: Italians don't want to open, they want to close. They don't want to include, they want to exclude. And the failed referendum becomes proof, even though the numbers say the exact opposite.

It is a precise political choice, which has a very strong symbolic meaning. It says: the referendum has failed, there is no desire for openness, and we are taking advantage of this to close ourselves off even further. It is time to build walls, not to tear them down.

The battle continues: between timid openings and violent closings

In October 2024, Forza Italia had presented a proposal called “The Roman right“It provided for citizenship after ten years of successful schooling. It wasn't the reform these young people had hoped for – ten years is a long time, and the “successful schooling” requirement introduces a debatable performance-based discrimination – but it was a signal nonetheless, a crack in the wall of rejection. For a few weeks, it had seemed like something might move, that the debate might reopen.

However, the League responded firmly. First with words, then with deeds. And on December 7, 2025, the proposal arrived that closed off all avenues: not only no concessions, but a hardening across the board. Integration exams, residency periods extended up to ten years for those born in Italy, and an expansion of the grounds for citizenship revocation. It is a harsh, very harsh response, which transforms citizenship into a prize to be earned, a privilege to be won through ever higher tests and obstacles.

The League's message is clear: citizenship is not given away. It is earned. And for those born to foreign parents, it is not enough to be born here, to have grown up here, to have lived here your whole life. You have to demonstrate it, prove it, earn it in a way that those born to Italian parents never have to.

The political debate continues. Proposals are piling up. Promises are being renewed on one side, while positions are hardening on the other. But for those who are waiting, every day is another day of exclusion. Every year is another year of suspended life. And now, with this proposal from the Lega, there is a risk that the door that seemed ajar will close definitively, complete with padlock and chains.

There is an Italy that is growing in schoolyards, on football pitches, in WhatsApp chats. It is a mixed-race, multi-coloured, polyphonic Italy. It is an Italy where Giulia and Sara are best friends, where Marco and Ahmed play on the same team, where Francesca and Aisha share their homework.

This Italy already exists. It lives, it breathes, it dreams, it laughs, it cries. But the Italian state pretends not to see it. It continues to think in terms of last century's categories, to draw borders that reality has already erased.

E così si creano generazioni di ragazzi che si sentono traditi dal proprio Paese. Che imparano presto che “tutti i cittadini hanno pari dignità sociale” è solo una frase scritta sulla Costituzione, non una realtà. Che scoprono che l’equality sostanziale di cui parla l’articolo 3 è, per loro, solo un’illusione.

These young people aren't asking for privileges. They are just asking to be recognised for what they are: Italians. Not second generation. Not Italians with an asterisk. Not half-Italians. Just Italians.

But until the law changes, they will remain in this limbo. Strangers in their own home. Guests in their own country. Denied Italians.

Thirty years of battles to expand rights, and the response is to restrict them even further. Thirty years of dashed hopes, of failed reforms, of betrayed promises. And now this too: the tightening of rules precisely for those born here, for those who didn't choose this country but were born into it, grew up in it, built their lives here.

The question, in the end, is always the same: what kind of country do we want to be? A country that includes or a country that excludes? A country that recognises reality or a country that continues to live in the past?

The League's proposal tells us what kind of country they want to build. A country where if you are born to the wrong parents, you have to pass exams, wait for years, and continually prove you deserve what for others is automatic. A country where integration is not measured by the life you have lived, but by tests and residency periods.

It's an Italy that looks backwards, not forwards. An Italy that is afraid of change, that clings to an idea of national identity that no longer exists, if it ever did. An Italy that prefers exclusion to inclusion, distrust to’Welcome, the blood to shared life.

But every day that passes without reform is a day we tell hundreds of thousands of young people: you are not enough. And they believe it. They internalise this exclusion. They learn to feel like strangers. And so we lose not only them, but also what they could have given to this country. We lose their talent, their energy, their freshness. We lose the chance to build a richer, more diverse, more vibrant Italy.

The Lega's proposal dated 7 December 2025 is merely the latest chapter in this long history of exclusion. But it must not be the last. It must not become law. It must not turn into yet another door slammed in the face of those who are already here, who are already part of this country, who *are* this country.

Thirty years is too long to wait. It's time to say enough. It's time to change direction. Not to tighten, but to open. Not to exclude, but to include. Not to ask for further tests, but to finally acknowledge that the most important test – that of lived life – these young people passed long ago.

It is time to tell Sara, Ahmed, Fatima, Chen, Aisha, Driss: welcome home. This is your home. Not because someone grants it to you, but because it always has been. You don't have to prove anything. You don't have to pass any tests. You don't have to wait for more years. Welcome home, Italians. Without adjectives. Without distinctions. Without asterisks. Without tests.

Welcome home.

PHOTO CREDITS: Italians without citizenship. Un momento della demonstration #CittadinanzaDay, 2022.