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An Italian referendum on granting faster citizenship to immigrants has failed due to a low turnout, as voters heeded Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s call to boycott the ballot.
About 30 per cent of eligible voters participated in the two-day referendum that sought to halve the time migrants must live in Italy before they can seek citizenship, according to the Italian ministry of interior. At least 50 per cent of eligible voters were required for the vote to pass.
The referendum, backed by leftwing opposition and activist groups, sought to repeal a law dating back to 1992 that mandated 10 years of residency for foreigners from outside the EU, up from a previous five-year requirement.
Had the referendum succeeded, 2.5mn foreign migrants already in Italy for five years or longer could have been eligible to apply for citizenship immediately, proponents said.
Of those who voted, more than 65 per cent supported the change and under 35 per cent opposed it, with counting around two-thirds of the way through.
As it became clear that the referendum had failed to gain quorum, far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini said his League party would push to tighten laws in order to make naturalisation even more difficult.
“Citizenship is not a gift,” Salvini said on Monday. “We ask for tougher and more severe rules to be Italian citizens. A few more years of residence are not enough.”
Italy is home to a rising number of children of immigrant parents who are raised and educated in the country but remain foreigners from a legal perspective. About 11 per cent of all children attending Italian schools are currently foreign nationals.
The referendum campaign was prompted 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 furore prompted some to call for a faster path to citizenship for migrant-origin children raised in Italy, those on the far right believe that such descendants of immigrants could never be considered genuine Italians.
Meloni and her coalition partners — Salvini’s League and the centre-right Forza Italia party — have deliberately ignored the referendum, calling on voters to abstain.
Meloni herself went to a polling station on Sunday but refused to cast her ballot.
The premier did not comment on the results on Monday afternoon, but her Brothers of Italy party tweeted a picture of opposition party leaders with the words “you lost”.
Referendum supporters expressed disappointment but said they would keep fighting for a faster, easier path to naturalisation which currently can last a minimum of 15 years.
“When we started this referendum, we already knew this was just a small step to try to change the citizenship law,” said Indian-born Deepika Salhan, 26, who arrived in Italy when she was nine years old and acquired citizenship last year — seven years after her father was naturalised.
“We are well prepared that the fight, and the movement, must continue,” added Salhan, who is president of On the Right Side Of History, an advocacy group pushing for comprehensive immigration law reform.
The League and Forza Italia both took to social media on Sunday to claim that Italians had spent a sunny day on the beach, rather than waste their time at polling stations.
Italy’s state broadcaster, Rai, and other mainstream media channels and newspapers had near blackout on coverage of the referendum, which was barely mentioned on the front pages of national newspapers on Sunday — the day the polls opened.
“Many people didn’t even know there was a referendum or they got to know about it just the day before,” said Salhan. “There wasn’t any kind of information or publicity about it from the institutions.”
Lorenzo Pregliasco, founder of Youtrend, an Italian political polling agency, said immigration had become a lightning rod in the country’s hyper-partisan politics, as the centre-left opposition described it as a referendum on Meloni’s government.
“The centre-left clearly pointed at the fact that this vote was a way to show the Meloni government that they are not the majority in the country any more,” Pregliasco said. “This ended up politicising the debate too much.”
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