It is not true, as the Government maintains, that from now on it will be easier for the children of immigrants born in Italy, if they want to, to become our fellow citizens. Considering that the law recently passed in this regard (art. n.33, of the Law Decree of 21st June), modifies little or nothing of the obstacle course imposed on them to obtain naturalisation. For three basic flaws. Both in form and in substance.
Let's start from the initial paragraph of the provision: “For the purposes of article 4, paragraph 2, of the law of 5 February 1992, n. 91, the interested party is not attributable to any non-compliance attributable to the parents or to the PA offices, and he can demonstrate possession of the requisites with any other suitable documentation”. Good intentions. But not specific, mandatory amendments to modify the legislation in force.
With the further complication that the text refers to the Citizenship Law of 1992 and forgets its far more important implementation regulation, published two years late in February 1994. An oversight that is not venial but capital. If only because the conditions required of the children of immigrants to apply for citizenship are only generically indicated in an article of the 92 Law which is different from the one which specifies them in the implementation Regulation. A qui pro quo that will provoke, as it is easy to imagine, an endless string of interpretative disputes. But that underlies a second, more serious limitation.
The government text, in fact, is silent on the implementation procedures. Not a small gap. Since a law, in the absence of an act that regulates the times, ways and procedures of implementation, even if it is in force, remains in limbo. Not implemented. Unless we resort, here the donkey falls, to the "surrogate" instrument used many times in the past: ministerial interpretative circulars. Ending, ex post and in silence, to give power back to the discretionary quibbling of the bureaucracy which, instead, we would like to eliminate. But it doesn't end there.
There is, in fact, a third dolens point. Given that no thought was given to putting a hand to the clause which, of all things, has most complicated the lives of many young foreign aspiring neo-Italians. According to the current law "A foreigner born in Italy, who has legally resided there without interruption until reaching the age of majority, becomes a citizen if he declares his intention to acquire Italian citizenship" (art. 4, paragraph 2, Law n.91) . "The declaration of will ... must be correlated with ... documentation relating to residence" (Article 3, paragraph 4, Implementing Regulation Law No. 91). With the consequence that a normal holiday abroad or a trip to the parents' country of origin, representing a violation of "uninterrupted residence", allowed the official on duty to turn up his nose and block, at his discretion, the application for the acquisition of Italian citizenship.
