Ihsane Ait yahia she is 28 and has lived in Italy since she was 6. But the citizenship law says she is not yet Italian. She arrived here from Morocco thanks to the family reunification activated by her father and today, 22 years later she is the only one in her family not to have obtained legal recognition. Her 4 sisters and her parents are, but for her the procedure provided for by the Italian law on citizenship is different. Not having been born here, she was only able to make her request after completion of the eighteenth year, when he was studying and preparing to graduate. But his practice was rejected. Because? For income reasons. One of the many contradictions foreseen by the citizenship law, which Ihsane lives on his skin every day. And like her over a million girls and boys.
Ihsane works in a law firm that deals with criminal law and immigration law. With the task of helping the lawyer in assisting foreign clients and accompanying them to the offices, to the Police Headquarters or to the Prefecture. Something that he still has to do, at fixed intervals, also for his daily life in Italy.
«My whole family is an Italian citizen except myself. Current legislation is highly discretionary and above all discriminatory. At the age of 18 I was not an active subject in the world of work, so I could not produce income, because like my Italian peers, I was studying, I was preparing for the final exam ». Although Ihsane presented supplementary documents documenting his work activities, volunteering, activism, projects in schools, thus describing his real integration, his request was rejected.
«In December 2020 I had the definitive rejection, which is a copy and paste of many others and this is the thing that made me angry the most. The paradoxical thing is that while I have to respect the deadlines that are given for the presentation, in their case instead the Ministry of the Interior does not even have the obligation to ensure that I have received the rejection. In my case he had remained lying in the post office and when I found him the deadlines for submitting the appeal were over ”.
In Italy, citizenship is governed by the law 5 February 1992, n. 91. One acquires iure sanguinis, that is, if one is born or adopted by Italian citizens or by foreign parents who have obtained Italian citizenship.
“If, for example, one of you adopted me, I would immediately become Italian while my father, since I am of age, cannot pass it on to me,” Ihsane says. «The most complex method is that by naturalization, because it is not enough to stay in the territory for ten years, not have a criminal record, speak well Italian but it is also necessary to demonstrate an income of at least three consecutive years, above a certain threshold. Very complicated for students, in fact most of them who applied for citizenship after the age of 18 did not obtain it ».
The latest data released by the Ministry of Education tell us how students with foreign origins are increasingly present in the classroom. Non-Italian citizens who, however, were half born here, in Italy. 574 thousand people. And not having citizenship means not being protected by the state in which you are growing up. In the last year, the growth was over 20 thousand children reaching 65.4%.
“Without citizenship I cannot vote, although I am inextricable because my parents are both Italian. I pay my taxes, I invest in the country, but I’m not represented and I can’t even represent myself. I am a ghost, indeed we are a million and a half ghosts ».
I feel discriminated against by institutions and politics. Nobody wants to make a commitment to give us a voice. Only together can we change things, let’s talk about civil rights, not whims. We need a just reform of the citizenship law that goes hand in hand with the European one ”.
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