A great-grandparent or even a great-great grandparent from Italy used to be all it took to guarantee Italian citizenship. A surprise decree has now changed all that, making it much harder for those with Italian ancestry to use blood line as a pathway to become Italian.
On March 28, the Italian government tightened regulations for claiming citizenship by jus sanguinis, or descendent blood line, effective immediately.
Basically you now need an Italian parent or a grandparent who was born in Italy, or an Italian parent who lived in Italy for at least two years before you were born, to be eligible. This is a major change to the citizenship law, and caught everyone by surprise.
Even if upheld by the constitutional court, there’s still a use for the research and docs search.
From https://www.mazzeschi.it/italian-citizenship/italian-citizenship-by-naturalization/
And if your great-great-grandparent was born in Italy, then there’s a good chance that your grandparent born abroad was Italian (even if never registered as such). So not as easy as before but having an Italian ancestor is still helpful in regaining ties with the country…
Yeah my case was going to be a 1948/pre1912 through a great great grandmother that didn’t voluntarily renounce italian citizenship, so already a toss up from what I’ve read. 🤷♂️
I’ll keep an eye on this development anyway, of course. The details of this bill seem hyper aggressive and my first instinct is it wouldn’t pass in its current form. But if this is this big of an issue then it seems likely some version of it will pass at some point. And I’m nowhere near having my documentation ready. I expect to need a CONE, to amend my gggm death certificate, at a minimum…
Yeah, especially that they just announced it with both immediate and retroactive effect, so no warning to those who were almost finished with the documents and ready to apply. I feel really bad for those who were just ready to apply on March 31st…
Good luck!