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An Italian referendum to grant a faster citizenship for immigrants due to a low turnout has failed because the voters observed the call from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to boycott the ballot paper.
About 30 percent of the legitimate voters took part in the two -day referendum, which, according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, searched for the time that migrants had to live in Italy before striving for citizenship. At least 50 percent of the legitimate voters had to adopt the vote.
The referendum, which was supported by left-wing opposition and activist groups, tried to lift a law from 1992, which prescribes 10 years of residence for foreigners from outside the EU in front of an earlier five-year requirements.
If the referendum had been successful, 2.5 million foreign migrants could have been used for five years or more in Italy to immediately apply for citizenship, supporters said.
Of those who voted, more than 65 percent supported the change and under 35 percent, with about two thirds of the path being looked through.
When it became clear that the referendum had not achieved a quorum, the right-wing extremist deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said that his league party would be urged to tighten laws in order to make naturalization even more difficult.
“Citizenship is not a gift,” said Salvini on Monday. “We ask for harder and more serious rules to be Italian citizens. A few more years in the place of residence are not enough.”
In Italy there is an increasing number of children of parents with a migration background who grew up and trained in the country, but remain foreigners from a legal point of view. Around 11 percent of all children who attend Italian schools are currently foreign nationals.
The referendum campaign was arranged by the heated debate last year when Italy won an Olympic gold medal in women’s volleyball with a team whose star players were the daughters of African migrants.
While the sensation prompted some to demand one Faster path to citizenship For children who grew up in Italy, those who are on the far right are that such offspring could never be seen as real Italians.
Meloni and her coalition partners Salvinis League and the center-right-forza-tamia party committees intentionally ignore the referendum and ask the voters to contain themselves.
Meloni himself went to a polling station on Sunday, but refused to hand over her ballot paper.
The prime minister did not comment on the results on Monday afternoon, but her party of the Brothers Italy tweeted a picture of opposition party leaders with the words “they lost”.
Referendum supporters expressed disappointments, but said that they would continue to fight for a faster and easier way to naturalize, which can currently take at least 15 years.
“When we started this referendum, we already knew that this was only a small step to try to change the Citizenship Act,” said the 26-year-old in India-born Deepika Salhan, who arrived in Italy when she was nine years old and last year citizenship her father acquired her father years after built-in.
“We are well prepared that the struggle and the movement have to be continued,” added Salhan, the president of the right side of the story, to a representative group that urged a comprehensive reform of immigration law.
The league and Forza Italia went on social media on Sunday to say that Italians had spent a sunny day on the beach instead of wasting their time to polling stations.
The Italian state broadcaster, Rai and other mainstream media channels and newspapers had near the reporting on the referendum, which was hardly mentioned on Sunday on the front pages of the national newspapers – the day on which the polls were opened.
“Many people didn’t even know that there was a referendum, or they only found out about it the day before,” said Salhan. “There was no information or advertising from the institutions.”
Lorenzo Pregiasco, founder of Yotrend, an Italian political polling station, said that immigration had become a lightning shelf in the country’s hyper-party policy when the opposition of center links described it as a referendum about Meloni’s government.
“The focus was on the fact that this voice was a way to show the government of Meloni that they are no longer the majority in the country,” said Progliasco. “This has politicized the debate too much.”
