Premier Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini’s right-wing League party have presented bills in parliament to make it easier for Italy to send migrants back to their countries of origin and tighten the rules on Italian citizenship.

Under a bill presented by FdI, all non-EU nationals given prison terms of more than one year will be deported to their home countries via bilateral agreements to be negotiated with those countries.

FdI House whip Galeazzo Bignami said the crackdown was made possible by changes to the EU Migrant Pact that Premier Giorgia Meloni pushed for.

“Convicted immigrants will be repatriated,” Bignami told a press conference.

“This is an initiative that can finally be implemented today thanks to the changes secured by Giorgia Meloni at the European level,” he said, adding that the planned repatriations would also help ease overcrowding in Italian prisons.

“Out of a prison population of around 64,000 inmates, around 16,000 are immigrants,” he said.
The bill also broadens the scope for people to be stripped of Italian citizenship.

“We are extending the grounds for revocation of citizenship, which is currently possible for terrorism and insurgency offences, to all of the most serious crimes: murder, mass killing, kidnapping, and mafia-related felonies,” explained FdI’s Immigration Chief Sara Kelany.

The Lower House, meanwhile, on Wednesday approved a petition from the League to fast-track a bill it has presented introducing new reasons barring people from acquiring Italian citizenship and new grounds for stripping people of citizenship.

Children born in Italy to migrant parents who live here until they are 18 can acquire Italian citizenship within a year of their 18th birthday.

League House whip Riccardo Molinari said that, while the law does not currently foresee grounds to deny citizenship in such cases, the party’s new bill will bring some in.

“In cases of serious crimes against the person or property, or drug dealing, the granting of citizenship to foreign minors should be halted until full rehabilitation,” he said.

He said it should be possible to revoke Italian citizenship in the cases of people who “stab, kill, and rape.” Opposition lawmakers blasted the bills, saying the ruling majority was trying stop itself being outflanked by general-turned-politician Roberto Vannacci’s new far-right National Future (FN) party, whose flagship policy is remigration.

“Our Constitution says that all citizens are equal before the law, including naturalized citizens,” said 5-Star Movement (M5S) MP Vittoria Baldino.

“We refuse to abandon the principle of equality or to endorse a principle of racial superiority.

“This is a dangerous drift we cannot allow; therefore, we will stand as a bulwark against it, acting in the name of the Constitution and the rule of law”.

 

(ANSA)