I won’t vote in the next Italian elections—not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t.

Related

Articles1/3

An Ex-W.O.P. Casts His Vote

My First Italian Election

Notes from a Dual Citizen: 1

• 
• 

Although my parents were born, raised, and married in Italy, hold dual Italian and U.S. citizenship, own property and vote in both countries, I was born in the U.S. and cannot claim Italian citizenship.

Italian Americans (along with other hyphenated Italians) who have claimed or reclaimed their Italian citizenship have the right to vote in Italian elections. It’s a curious situation, in that some of the citizens of Italy’s diaspora may have limited knowledge of what’s happening in Italy today. But the potential impact of their right to vote is quite impressive. In the 2006 elections, the Italian vote abroad was crucial to the center-left coalition’s narrow victory (much to the chagrin of Berlusconi and his allies, who had supported giving the vote to Italians abroad).

Italy’s citizenship laws favor the outdated jus sanguinis concept, whereby citizenship is established via a person’s blood ties. Although there are other ways to gain citizenship, they are more cumbersome, and jus sanguinis remains the predominant method, making it particularly tough on Italy’s new immigrants (who number in the millions) to gain the franchise. The road to citizenship for recent immigrants to Italy from non-European Union countries is long, expensive, and challenging. Indeed, Prodi’s coalition succeeded to some extent to change some of these antiquated laws so that, for example, a child born in Italy of legal residents can now be granted citizenship at birth (assuming the parents were documented residents for five years--no small feat).

The Italian citizenship laws changed in 1992 in such a way to allow many who had previously lost their citizenship to reclaim it (which is what my parents did), and many who were never before allowed to have it because their parents were not born in Italy to claim it. It’s relevant to remember that Italy’s law changed in an era when “native” Italian population growth was at zero or below and new immigrant population growth was high. Xenophobia fostered a renewed sense of nationalism, reminding me of some of the ways Mussolini reached out to Italian immigrants in his effort to build an Italian empire.

The 1990s laws were written with pre-World War II immigration in mind, so that an individual could trace lineage back across many generations. For example, if when your grandmother was born in, say, Denver, her father was Italian, then you too can claim official Italian identity.

My parents immigrated to the U.S. in the decades after the Second World War. By the time I was born they had both become U.S. citizens. That my grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., were all Italian doesn’t fit into the citizenship equation since it is my parents who were first-generation Italian Americans (this is not exactly true, but it’s much tidier to explain it this way). I cannot claim citizenship—even though my older siblings, their spouses, and their children can (since when my siblings were born, one or both of our parents were “still” Italian.)

  (CLICK ON PASSPORT TO WATCH A RELATED FILM!)

I knew the law well when about ten years ago I thought I’d try anyway. I gathered up all of my parents’ Italian documents (birth certificates, marriage license, and passports), and left their U.S. passports at home. I dressed in my most up-to-date Roman outfit, marshaled my most fluent, colloquial Italian, and headed to the San Francisco Consulate.

The consulate isn’t very large, and although there is a glass wall that divides the staff from visitors, everyone in the waiting area is inevitably in everyone’s business. It seems that there are always at least half a dozen Italians with nothing better to do than hang around reading L’Espresso, a scambiare due chiacchiere.

My turn came. I passed my documents over and a woman on staff started to look through them. She was silent. She looked up at me. She looked back down. She asked me a few mundane questions regarding the rain outside. Then, aspetta, she paused, appearing merely curious at first: “Your mother is Italian but her passport lists her residence as the U.S. So, she must have a green card!” (But she doesn’t of course since she is also a U.S. citizen.)

I played dumb—furba would be more appropriate. Boh. I don’t know. This is all she gave me. Wait. She walked away. Then she came back. No, no, she shook her head. Wait, maybe there’s still a way. And she started doing basic math on the back of an envelope.

                           1992 (the year the law changed)

                        -  1969 (the year I was born)

                               23

And then more head shaking: “Mi dispiace Signora, ma non la posso dichiarare Italiana.”

She continued with a flurry of explanations, full of emotion. I paraphrase: “I’m sorry, it breaks my heart, because clearly you are Italian! And every day I get requests from people whose grandparents or great-grandparents were from Italy, and these people have no connection to Italy. And you clearly do. But no. If you were still under 18 when the law had changed, then we could do it, but you were already an adult, 23. There are others like you, it’s the law, it was poorly written. They didn’t think about people like you. It kills me, but you cannot be Italian.”

There was an audible sigh from the old men and women hanging out in the waiting room that day. Please, I begged, willing to get on my knees if need be. Isn’t there something you can do? Then suddenly I had everyone on my side: “Ma dai, come on, she’s Italian, plain as day!” And then I added, trying to joke: “But if I were a really good soccer player? Would you do it then?” And two old men this time started getting really vocal, pounding their fists at La Gazzetta dello Sport as they bellowed: “She’s right! They make players Italian all the time, it’s not right, it’s not fair. Come on! Give her what she wants!”

But there was nothing to be done.

I’ve since met others disqualified because of the details of the 1992 law, all post-WWII second-generation Italian Americans. I’ve come to see that we stand in a kind of solidarity with today’s immigrants (mainly people of color) living in Italy. (A point brought to light by a recent radio interview I was part of, see Rete G2 link below.) No doubt, though, their disenfranchisement has more real repercussions for their day-to-day lives in Italy than it does for mine here in California.

And yet the relationship reminds me of the usefulness of thinking about Italy’s history of emigration in comparison to its contemporary status as a receiver of new immigrants. What’s at stake for Italy to reclaim its (former) citizens, especially when so many came from rural and Southern Italy where they were themselves at times considered less than full citizens? These are issues that excite me.

So, no, I don’t, won’t, and, indeed, can’t vote in the upcoming Italian elections.