Argentina‘s libertarian President Javier Milei has been controversially granted Italian citizenship by the government in Rome, enraging opposition politicians.
Italy’s citizenship laws are based on jure sanguinis or « right of blood », and allow even distant descendants of an Italian national to get a passport.
This meant Milei, who has Italian roots, could easily obtain the legal status. But Riccardo Magi, a lawmaker from the small opposition +Europa party, said the move was an “intolerable discrimination against so many young people who will only get it after many years”, The Guardian reported.
In a video posted on social media, Magi said: “Millions of Italians born in Italy, raised here, who studied, worked, and pay taxes in this country – unlike President Milei – will face an arduous journey to gain citizenship.”
Obtaining citizenship for the children of migrants born in Italy or who migrate there is much harder than it has been for Milei, and campaigners have proposed a referendum to ease the rules, but Meloni’s rightwing coalition has opposed softening the stance.
Currently, non-EU nationals must live in the country for 10 years before applying for citizenship, and even children born in Italy to foreign parents have to wait until they turn 18 to apply.
Milei’s sister Karina also received citizenship, with the applications fast-tracked by Rome, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Saturday.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is yet to respond to the criticism of the reported move.
Milei had been in the Italian capital to meet Meloni and take part in her Brothers of Italy party’s annual festival on Saturday.
The Argentinian President, who has caught the attenion of MAGA Republicans in the US with his huge to cuts to public spending, has been effusive about his Italian connections, saying in a TV interview during a previous trip that he felt « 75% Italian”, and professing “an incredible passion for Italian opera”.
Milei and Meloni are both prominent firebrands on the right and have become close political allies.
Last month, Milei bizarrely presented Meloni with a figurine of himself wielding a chainsaw in reference to his 2023 electoral campaign, in which he held up a chainsaw on the campaign trail to signal his intention to markedly reduce public spending.
He’s not the first Argentinian leader to have an Italian passport. Mauricio Macri, the South American country’s president from 2015 to 2019, also had dual citizenship.
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