The goal was clearly one step away in the last two days, when the Justice Ministry’s website began to crash due to heavy traffic. Thousands of people, for hours, made possible an almost unexpected result: obtaining the 500,000 signatures needed to hold a referendum to repeal the citizenship law long before the September 30 deadline.
Civati (Possible): “The contribution of people with new citizenship is essential”
“This is the best response to decades of one-way laws against foreigners, often punitive and almost always repressive, achieved in Italy with a fundamental contribution from newly naturalized people; another decisive innovation for Italian politics”, comments Giuseppe Civati with satisfaction, leader of Possibile on Today.it. It was the first political force to devote itself to achieving the goal, anticipating that all the center-left parties would join forces as the signatures increased and the possibility of success became real.
A reading confirmed by an analysis published by YouTrend. “The Citizenship Referendum, we read in the report, passed the quorum of 500,000 online signatures at around 16:15 after a day of intense support; driven mainly by the northern regions, with around 180,000 signatures in the previous 24 hours (an average of 7,500 per hour, including at night), and by the warmer southern regions, starting with Calabria (473). “More people registered for the referendum in regions with a higher percentage of foreigners (Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, Lazio and Tuscany, four regions with a foreign population of more than 11%),” YouTrend explained.
This success was also made possible by the mobilization of many people from the worlds of culture, entertainment and sports. Among them are Ghali, Zerocalcare, Alessandro Barbero, Julio Velasco, Levante, Matteo Garrone, Andrea Pennacchi, Malika Ayane, Cathy Latorre, Lorenzo Bernardi, Fabrizio Barca, Ascanio Celestini and Alessandra Campedelli. And then there are the mayors of the big cities: Roberto Gualtieri (Rome), Gaetano Manfredi (Naples), Stefano Lo Russo (Turin), Matteo Lepore (Bologna), Sara Funaro (Florence) and Vittoria Ferdinandi (Perugia).
Proposal: Extending the time spent in Italy to apply for citizenship from 10 to 5 years
The organisers are now preparing for the referendum campaign: the aim is to extend the period of stay in Italy to apply for citizenship from 10 to 5. A change in the law that would allow many young people who are actually Italian because they were born in our country or came as children to do sports at a competitive level without having to give up school trips, Erasmus and, in many cases, even participate in public competitions. And, above all, it would save them from the double paradox of having to pay a residence permit to live in the country of their birth and risking being sent back to countries that, on paper, they have often never seen and whose language they do not even speak. The proposal, which Matteo Salvini’s League and Fratelli d’Italia have openly opposed, could find support from Forza Italia: Antonio Tajani’s party will present a proposal on the Ius Scholae in the next few weeks that would allow them to apply for citizenship at the end of a work cycle.
Source: Today IT
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
