115
Italy ruling tells millions with Italian roots they have lost the right to citizenship
(edition.cnn.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
115 points (96.7% liked)
World News
54727 readers
2123 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, well, there are people who have lived abroad for generations, speak the local language, and don’t know Italian, but hold Italian citizenship simply because one of their great-great-grandparents was Italian. Meanwhile, people born and raised in Italy who know the language and the local dialect aren’t recognized as citizens simply because their parents aren’t Italian.
That's a symptom of the cultural identity of italy. Italy as a nation is still very new. When italian emigrants left for other countries there was no national language. Italy was a kingdom of dialects. That's why there's millions of italian americans that don't speak the language. Even if italian immigrants lived in common communities in their new countries, they may not know the dialect of their neighbors. So instead, they learned the local language and let their dialect die so they could communicate.
Italy is literally one of the first national states, wtf are you talking about?
Assimilation is a thing. Unless you segregate your ethnic group, you're bound to become part of local culture, rather than maintain your original one, regardless whether or not there is a language standard present in your historical motherland.
A dialect is a dialect. It is still a part of the same language.
The United States is older than Italy. Italy wasn't a unified nation until 1871. The United States became a country in 1776. And Italians did segregate into ethnic centers of cities in the United States. Chicago, New York, and St. Louis all have heavy italian presence within certain neighborhoods but even still lost their language. Italian dialects are not the same as regional accents. The nationalization of the italian language was still underway well into the 20th century. The Florentine dialect was only spoken by about 10% of the population in the 1870's at most. It wasn't until mass market radio and TV came along that it began to rapidly spread.
Nation state and a cultural identity are not the same thing. A single language is related to the former but also not really the defining feature. The idea of Italy existed for centuries before it became one. Nation state as a concept is recent enough that it only started becoming popular after the United States was founded, from the French revolution onwards.
I don't expect the current government to ever fix the second part, though.
I think if the decision had been going forward instead of backward, I would have felt better about it. Saying any descendents born after 2025 will not have assumed citizenship is very different than saying "Lol, your citizenship wasn't real."
Now I feel like the fact that I decided to learn Italian and work out an emigration plan before applying bit me in the ass. I should have started the process 15 years ago when I was as you say.
Exactly, plus, given the horrid conditions of many municipal offices in little towns that, in my opinion, should NOT count as separate municipalities, the public costs in terms of time and actual expenditure to verify the claims are ridiculously high.