Italian citizenship is not only a matter of documents, passports and residence, but also of identity and belonging. It is the principle around which Salvatore Aprigliano, a lawyer specialized in immigration law and judicial recognition of Italian citizenship by descent, has built an important part of his professional activity. Speaking to the microphones of the New Yorker, guest of the podcast Portraits, the founder of Aprigliano International Law Firm has retraced his personal and professional experience, focusing mainly on the consequences of the so-called Tajani decree, which entered into force on 28 March 2025, and on the judicial perspectives of a reform that profoundly modified the possibility of recognition of citizenship for descendants of Italians emigrated abroad.
Born in Milan from a family of Calabrian origins, Aprigliano studied Law at the State University, also spending a period in the United States before starting his legal career. After some experiences in Italian and international studies, he decided to start an independent activity, gradually developing a specialization in immigration law. A choice in which the events of his family also played an important role. “During the time spent in the United States, I had met a cousin who was dealing with immigration law. In Italy, in those years, there were still no legal studies really specialized in this matter”. The connection with its origins came almost naturally: «My father had emigrated very young from Calabria to Milan, while my cousin, always from Calabria, had emigrated to the United States. My legal path and my family’s stories have therefore ended up intersecting. It was also through this personal connection that I understood how much I was passionate about matter”.
The experience of immigrant families is one of the central elements of its conception of citizenship. Aprigliano recalls the visit to Ellis Island, the main entry point in the United States for millions of immigrants, and the images of Italians arrived in America between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. “I also visited Ellis Island and was particularly impressed by those images, the photographs of migrants and the stories they tell”. From those events a reflection on the contemporary meaning of belonging to a State comes: “Today, for me, citizenship represents the connection of a person with a place. But it must not necessarily be a physical connection, linked to the presence of an individual on a given territory. It can be, and very often it is, a cultural connection, a link of identity”.
It is this vision that has led him to concentrate his activity on the recognition of jure sanguinis citizenship, the principle that binds the transmission of citizenship to family offspring. “Not always the physical presence of a person in a given territory is the element that identifies its citizenship. There are our roots, what we are and what, in some way, we continue to take us back, regardless of where we live”. A matter of which he has been working for about twenty years, gradually became the centre of his profession. “Italian citizenship by descent has become this for me. I have lived the Tajani decree as a not particularly right norm. Of course it is a political choice, but what struck me most was its concrete consequences on the people and the legal situations that had already been determined”.
The decisive step arrived on 28 March 2025, when the entry into force of the decree introduced new restrictions on the recognition of Italian citizenship by descent. According to Aprigliano, one of the most problematic aspects concerns the different treatment reserved for people who, until then, were in substantially identical conditions. “Substantially, from day to day, the decree traced a net boundary between those who could continue to obtain the recognition of Italian citizenship and those who, from that moment on, could no longer do so”. The consequences, he explains, may even concern members of the same family: “They could be two brothers, or two people born even on the same day, with a substantially identical legal situation. Yet, depending on whether or not they had carried out certain actions before 28 March 2025, Italian citizens could be recognized or lost that possibility.”.
The absence of a notice period is one of the points on which the lawyer insists more. “The problem is that there was no notice. There was no provision for behaviour that these people should have taken within a given date to safeguard their position. This is the element that struck me most, beyond the political evaluations on reform”. The discontinuity introduced by the decree is described with an image: “It’s like a switch had been switched off from day to day. Whoever was in the middle of a journey, depending on the actions he had already undertaken, could continue to cultivate his dream of obtaining the recognition of Italian citizenship or to see him suddenly precluded”.
In order to understand the impact of the reform, according to Aprigliano, it is necessary to consider how long and complex the work that precedes a request for recognition. Many descendants of Italian emigrants spend years tracking birth, marriage and death certificates, reconstructing the generational passages and recovering documents stored in archives distributed between different countries. «The presentation of the application for recognition of citizenship does not represent the beginning of the journey, but very often its conclusion. Rebuilding a genealogical line generally takes years. It is necessary to carry out in-depth research, to reconstruct the history of your family, to trace documents in different countries, to recover certificates and to verify the various generative passages”. The entry into force of the new provisions has therefore interrupted paths already started for a long time. “I was particularly impressed by the human side of this affair. I was contacted by people who were literally desperate.” An experience that has also changed its professional involvement: “When you confront yourself directly with these situations and with the human side of the people involved, inevitably the matter becomes also personal. There is not only a legal matter on which to work.’.
In addition to the individual consequences, Aprigliano identifies a legal issue that considers particularly important: the relationship between the new discipline and the principle that citizenship by descent is acquired at birth, when the requirements laid down by law apply. “The problem is that today we have positions expressed by courts of the highest degree that are reconciled with a certain difficulty on this point”. The reference is to the statements of the Court of Cassation to United Sections and to the mechanism introduced by the decree. “To be able to operate as it was conceived, the Tajani decree provides that certain people are considered as if they had never acquired Italian citizenship. On the other hand, however, the Court of Cassation at United Sections, also very recently, said that the right is acquired at birth”. Hence the contradiction which, in its interpretation, requires a legal response: “On the one hand it is stated that citizenship is a right acquired at the time of birth, on the other it is established that certain persons should be considered as if that right had never acquired it.”.
The reasoning also extends to the relationship between Italy and the communities of Italian origin in the world. Aprigliano believes that the debate on citizenship should take into account both the national demographic situation and the contribution of migrants to the spread of Italian culture abroad. “On the one hand we have an Italian demographic situation which is certainly not rosy. On the other hand, we should probably recognize that if today Italy is such a well-known and appreciated country in the world, a part of the merit also belongs to those people who have had the courage to leave it to seek better living conditions”. The reference goes mainly to the great historical migrations: “I think of the Italians who emigrated at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They left their country, but they brought Italian roots with them. And precisely because those roots have remained part of their identity, they have contributed to spread them in the places where they arrived and settled”.
An important part of the story is now moving to the ground of European justice. After the interventions of the Italian judicial institutions, the theme of the recognition of citizenship by descent came before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Aprigliano attaches particular importance to a possible pronouncement that gives you the incompatibility of certain national provisions with European law. “Our legal system is built on regulatory sources that have different degrees. The right of the European Union, in the matter of its competence, has a primacy position regarding national law”. The consequences could be relevant: ‘If a national provision is not compatible with the law of the European Union and the Court of Justice establishes this incompatibility, the national court is obliged to disapply the internal provision in contrast with European law’. For this reason, according to the lawyer, a possible unfavourable decision to the setting of the Tajani decree would “an absolutely fundamental scope”.
In view of the times, Aprigliano invites us to consider the ordinary duration of European proceedings and the possibility for further questions to be submitted. “If we look at the statistics of the last two or three years, the average time is about sixteen, seventeen or eighteen months.” The procedure already initiated, known as the Picuso case, comes from the Ordinance No 147 of July 2026 of the Constitutional Court. But it may not be the only one: ‘There are also other aspects of the reform which could be submitted to the Court’s examination. If other national courts intervene, the new questions may be brought together in the pending proceedings or give rise to separate decisions. “It is therefore necessary to understand whether the Court of Justice will limit itself to answering the specific question raised by the Constitutional Court or whether it will address the decree and its consequences on a broader profile”.
Comparison with the United States provides a further perspective on citizenship and the different models adopted by Western countries. Aprigliano recalls the principle of US alone ius and, above all, the different temporal requirements for the naturalization of immigrants. “In the United States it is possible to apply for naturalization after five years of stay, while in Italy, for the ordinary naturalization of an extra-Community citizen, we are ten years old, to which the technical time necessary for the examination and definition of the application must be added”. A difference that becomes particularly significant in the European context, where the citizenship of a Member State also attributes exercising rights in other EU countries. “A foreign national who obtains Portuguese, Spanish or French citizenship acquires substantially, with reference to Italy, a series of rights that are only slightly lower than those of an Italian citizen”. To Aprigliano, therefore, “the theme of citizenship must now be addressed also in a European and international dimension, and not only through the legislation of the individual State”.
The battle on the recognition of citizenship by descent is intertwined, finally, with the professional projects of Aprigliano, which aims to further develop his own study and to convey the skills gained to the new generations of lawyers. “My dream is to be able to further develop the study along the path I have undertaken, building an organization that also allows me to spread and transmit the knowledge we have acquired.” A goal which includes the training of young people and the desire to maintain a central subject which now considers part of its professional identity. «I would like to be able to convey to them not only professional knowledge, but also passion for what we do». But the priority remains the legal question opened by the reform of 2025: “Today what we are most passionate about is Italian citizenship by descent. For this reason our goal is to try to win this legal battle and to employ all the possible efforts to achieve the result we have set ourselves up.”.
L’articolo Salvatore Aprigliano: Italian citizenship, a right through generations proviene da IlNewyorkese.
