According to the latest figures of Italy’s National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT), 184,638 non-EU citizens acquired Italian citizenship in 2016. Of these 5,799 were Brazilians, placing this nationality seventh in the ranking, behind Albanians (36,920), Moroccans (35,212), Indians (9,527), Bangladeshis (8,442), Pakistanis (7,678) and Macedonians (6,771).
A couple of weeks ago I moved to Italy, as a Brazilian citizen, in order to apply for citizenship based on the ius sanguinis principle of the National Law, which guarantees this right for the descendants of Italian ancestors.When I arrived in my new home, which I share with other Brazilians and eventual Airbnb tourists, one of my Brazilian housemates was having a conversation with an Italian guest. This man has already been granted ius sanguinis citizenship after more than a year of exhausting bureaucratic procedures. He was complaining to the Italian man about the prejudice that he suffers in finding a job even now when he enjoys citizenship. It was “absurd” that Africans, Asians and people from the Middle East who are here have priority in the search for a job and “we” – who obtain citizenship via family transmission – are not like these “other immigrants”, since we should have rights and the people who leave their countries without having Italian blood should not.
