The failure of the proposal to liberalise Italy’s naturalisation process comes at an interesting time.
Left-wing campaigners had sought to reduce the residency requirement for becoming a naturalised Italian citizen from ten years to five.
Italy’s conservative parties, under the leadership of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, encouraged voters to stay home in order to ensure that the referendum result would be void.
The results vindicated Meloni’s approach, with only 30% of voters turning out (well below the required 50% threshold). An analysis of the regional results demonstrates what happened, with turnout fairly high in the left-leaning regions of north-central Italy, and much lower in the more conservative south and north-east.
As explained by Euronews, Italy is at the more conservative end of the European spectrum in its insistence that an Italian-in-waiting live in the country for a full decade before s/he can formally become part of the national family.
On the more liberal end there are countries which allow foreign residents to become citizens after just five years, including France, Germany, the UK and of course Ireland, which Matt Treacy notes is one of the easier countries in which to acquire citizenship.
Significantly though, the rapid naturalisation club is about to get smaller.
During his landmark speech on immigration, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his Labour government intends to increase the “time it takes to acquire settled status…from five years to ten.”
This is being undertaken as part of Sir Keir’s overall efforts to reduce inward migration significantly and therefore avert the risk of Britain “becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”
As in other policy areas, Ireland is lagging behind, still not aware of the rapid movements taking place across Europe or the risk that many of the potential immigrants to Britain may choose this country instead.
The rules for becoming an Irish citizen through naturalisation are strikingly straightforward.
An applicant must have spent the last year in continuous residence in the State, along with spending four of the last eight previous years here.
In effect, provided that the person has been here for five years and has not found themselves on the wrong side of the law, they can become Irish citizens.
Ceremonies for those being granted citizenship have become a feature of Irish life since the current system was introduced by the former Fine Gael Minister for Justice Alan Shatter.
Within months of taking office, Shatter boasted that the previous citizenship application average waiting time of 25 months was no more, and that “persons applying for citizenship will be given a decision on their application within six months.”
Recently-released figures by the current Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan give a sense of just how consequential Shatter’s reforms have been.
Since 2011, 200,000 people have been granted Irish citizenship. More than 20,000 people applied for citizenship in 2023, and that increased to almost 31,000 last year.
Consider the scale here. Due to the liberalisation of the naturalisation system, we have already added a population the size of County Limerick, and are now adding a population the size of County Leitrim each year.
Citizenship ceremonies are generally accompanied by glowing media coverage, and with some cause. Immigration is essentially a sign that a society is healthy: people want to move in.
Many of those who have been naturalised since 2011 have contributed much to making Ireland a better place, be it in their employment, their tax bills and through their involvement in their local communities.
But a problem still remains. This scale of immigration inevitably makes it harder for newcomers to be thoroughly assimilated, and five years generally is not long enough to truly become Irish.
That is not the fault of the immigrant. Society, in Edmund Burke’s famous description, is a contract “between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Those of distant Irish heritage aside, naturalisation applicants are generally cut off from one component of that societal contract.
They have no grandparents to ask what Ireland was once like, no family genealogies to explore, no ancestral graves to visit and place flowers upon.
As a result, their Irishness has to develop in time, and as the voters of Italy have just determined, five years is not enough time.
Moreover, in spite of the precious nature of Irish nationhood, the current system does little to honour it.
Even the mandatory Declaration of Fidelity taken by applicants at citizenship ceremonies in Ireland is remarkably dry:
“I (name) having applied to the Minister for Justice for a certificate of naturalisation, hereby solemnly declare my fidelity to the Irish nation and my loyalty to the State. I undertake to faithfully observe the laws of the State and to respect its democratic values.”
Compare this to the American naturalisation oath, which makes crystal clear the costs of citizenship and loyalty:
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”
For the ‘new Irish,’ no prior national allegiances are forsworn. No solemn promise to shed blood in defence of Irish soil is made. There is of course no reference to God (who is still part of Bunreacht na hÉireann, in spite of the wishes of our secular governing class), nor is any thought given to the history of the Irish nation and the struggles and accomplishments along the way.
Ireland and Irishness deserve better than this, and so too do those patriotic immigrants who truly wish to be Irish in more than legal standing alone.
A starting point to improve the current system, taking the Italian lead, would be to extend the residency requirement from five years to ten years.
Beyond that, applicants should be required to complete an intensive course on Irish history and civics, along the lines of the American system where applicants can be asked any of 100 questions on American civics.
The goal should be to make every new Irish citizen aware of this country’s rich history, which they are not connected to by blood but which they will now be part of as the long national story moves forward.
It would be better still if this were accompanied by some kind of service component, requiring that an applicant dedicate a certain number of hours of voluntary service to their community (such as a charitable, religious or environmental organisation).
Due to the actions of recent governments, we are already well on the road to being the “island of strangers” which Britain’s Prime Minister warns about.
We still have time to reverse course in Ireland, and this we must do.
