Americans Flocked to Italy for an Easy Path to Citizenship. Then the Rules Changed
For more than a decade, Italy offered one of the most accessible routes to a powerful European passport available anywhere in the world. Under the long-standing principle of jure sanguinis—citizenship by blood—anyone who could document an unbroken line of descent from an Italian-born ancestor alive after the country’s unification in 1861 was already considered Italian in the eyes of the law. There was no generational limit. No language test. No residency requirement. No investment. Americans with even distant Sicilian, Calabrian, or northern Italian roots simply gathered birth, marriage, and naturalization records, submitted them to a consulate or Italian municipality, and waited.
That pathway became a magnet. Political uncertainty in the United States, the rise of remote work, rising healthcare and housing costs, and the practical value of visa-free access to the European Union drove a surge of interest. Italian-American families researched genealogy, hired document specialists, and paid lawyers to navigate the often slow and bureaucratic process. By the early 2020s the numbers were climbing sharply. According to Eurostat data, American naturalizations in Italy rose from 280 in 2014 to 824 in 2024, with a particularly steep increase after 2020. The 11-year total reached nearly 4,800 completed acquisitions. Those figures understate the real demand: consular processing times routinely stretched two to three years, meaning thousands more applications were already in the pipeline when the rules suddenly changed.
On March 28, 2025, the Meloni government issued Decree-Law 36/2025, known as the Tajani Decree after Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Parliament converted it into Law 74/2025, which took effect in May. The reform inserted a new Article 3-bis into Italy’s core citizenship statute (Law 91/1992). For the first time, automatic transmission of citizenship by descent was capped at two generations. New applicants born abroad who already held another citizenship would generally qualify only if they had an Italian-born parent or grandparent who had held exclusively Italian citizenship. Claims based on great-grandparents or more distant ancestors—precisely the situation of the majority of Italian-Americans whose families emigrated between the 1880s and 1940s—were closed for anyone who had not already filed or secured a confirmed appointment.
The cutoff was abrupt. Applications or confirmed consular appointments recorded by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on March 27, 2025, continued under the old unlimited rules. Everything after that date fell under the new restrictions. Tajani defended the change in blunt terms: Italian citizenship “is a serious thing. It’s not a game to get a passport that allows you to go shopping in Miami.” Officials pointed to overwhelmed consulates, long backlogs, and concerns that the system was being used by people with little genuine connection to Italy. Estimates suggested 60 to 80 million people worldwide had potential claims under the previous rules. The government argued the reform restored meaning to citizenship and protected the integrity of the system.
The human impact was immediate. Families who had spent years and thousands of dollars collecting records, translating documents, and waiting for appointments found themselves locked out overnight. Multi-generational Italian-Americans, the largest group of potential claimants in the United States, were hit hardest. Some who had already moved to Italy or made concrete plans based on expected citizenship recognition were left in legal limbo. Others watched as closer relatives (parents or grandparents) remained eligible while they themselves were not.
Legal challenges followed quickly. Italy’s Constitutional Court initially upheld the core of the reform in Ruling No. 63/2026, framing the new rules as a bar to acquisition rather than a revocation of existing rights. The Court of Cassation later resolved a separate but related “minor issue”—the question of whether a parent’s naturalization while a child was underage severed the bloodline for later generations—in a way that restored eligibility for some previously denied applicants. In July 2026 the Constitutional Court referred key questions about the reform’s compatibility with European Union citizenship rules to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. As of August 2026, the two-generation limit remains in force while the European case proceeds. The referral creates uncertainty but does not reopen the door for new applicants.
Who still qualifies under the current rules? Applicants who filed a complete administrative application, obtained a confirmed consular appointment, or initiated a judicial claim by the March 27, 2025 deadline generally proceed under the old system. New applicants must usually show an Italian-born parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship, or meet narrower exceptions such as a parent’s continuous two-year residence in Italy after acquiring citizenship and before the applicant’s birth. Consular fees have also risen, and many processes now require in-person interviews in Italy.
The Italian reform fits a broader pattern. Several European countries that once offered relatively generous ancestry or residency routes have tightened rules in recent years. Portugal lengthened its naturalization timeline. Spain ended its golden-visa program. Other nations have narrowed citizenship-by-descent windows. Americans seeking a European “Plan B” have shifted attention toward Ireland, where applications through the Foreign Births Register jumped significantly, and toward other options. Yet none matched the combination of historical openness, large diaspora, and strong passport that Italy previously offered.
For those who completed the process under the old rules, the Italian passport remains highly valuable. It confers EU free-movement rights, strong global mobility, and the practical option of living and working across the continent. For the many Italian-Americans still gathering documents or waiting for appointments when the decree landed, the easy path disappeared. What had been a bureaucratic but ultimately accessible recognition of ancestral status became, for most multi-generational claimants, a closed route.
Italy’s decision reflects a deliberate policy choice: to prioritize closer generational and cultural ties over the expansive diaspora model that defined the previous era. Whether the pending European Court ruling will soften or overturn parts of the reform remains to be seen. In the meantime, the message is clear. The era of unlimited Italian citizenship by descent has ended. The door that once stood open to millions of Americans with Italian roots is now largely shut.
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