Everyone knows that Italy has been, for some decades, a country in which the Mediterranean ethnicity and the Catholic religion are less and less in the majority. This consolidated fact of civil society, however, does not find full correspondence in the current laws with specific reference to that on citizenship. The latter, excellent at the time of its promulgation in February 1992, today requires a necessary revision. For years on this issue there has been a debate, unfortunately abstract and highly demagogic, in which, like a rabbit from the hat, disparate arguments are pulled out, deliberately avoiding the use of the only element that should act as a guide in these cases: common sense which, it is worth remembering, has no political color.
As many had hoped, the recently concluded Olympic Games in Paris allowed us to take a step forward. This event reminded us that, beyond our borders, other Western European nations have long been seeking solutions to the looming ethnic and religious issues. Undoubtedly, comparing our country to France and the United Kingdom may be unfair. At the end of the 19th century, when these two powers were building their colonial empires, a continuous hemorrhage of emigration began in the newborn Savoy kingdom, which, in more than a century, has led to the presence, today, of more than ten million Italian citizens scattered around the world. The effective lack of our own colonial empire and, consequently, of a policy dedicated to it have laid the foundations for subsequent difficulties. In fact, unlike what happened in France and the United Kingdom, whose immigrants arrived over time from the former colonies, better prepared from a cultural point of view for the reality they would encounter, those who arrived in Italy, which only became a destination for immigration in the 1980s, found themselves catapulted into a social context completely alien to their habits and customs.
Having explained the historical reasons that have made the integration of new arrivals in Italy more difficult, we must also understand that the time has come to create a less hostile climate towards those who, having formal and substantial right, clearly demonstrate their desire to become citizens. This does not mean turning access to nationality into a walk in the park, but rather making it feasible based on a precisely highlighted path that takes into account objective and concrete data. From this perspective, school emerges as the supreme discriminating criterion.
Indeed, to certify the unparalleled value of school education, yesterday came the conquest of the Olympic title by that splendid multi-ethnic mosaic that is the women’s national volleyball team. A success that has its roots right in school, the essential alma mater of this beautiful sporting discipline. It is no coincidence that, in Italy, volleyball is the only team sport in which gender equality is in force in the interest of the public. Young people of all backgrounds begin to practice it together from primary school onwards. Only a few, obviously, reach the top. The selection process, a splendid laboratory of 360° integration, is indiscriminately open to all.
In April 2023, the Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida raised the alarm about ethnic substitution in the hope that, driven by economic incentives, the ancient Italians would be convinced to generate more children. Subsequently, a few months ago, General Roberto Vannacci focused, in a decidedly marked way, on the morphological characteristics, very different from the Mediterranean ones, of the champion of the National team and new Olympic champion, Paola Egonu. These two decidedly unfortunate statements have generated quite a bit of controversy. As confirmation of how powerful a glue victory is, both Lollobrigida and Vannacci, in the last few hours, have corrected their aim, decisively putting the reverse gear. This repentance can only be pleasing, generating, at the same time, the hope that from September a new political season can open that leads to the expansion of law 92/91 in order to allow many young people, Italians in everything except their fundamental right, to become full citizens.
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