Italy just killed citizenship by descent

If you've ever considered getting residency or citizenship by descent in a foreign country, but thought you might just wait a few more years before making that happen, then you might want to reconsider and act sooner rather than later—because we've seen a clear trend over the years of countries making it harder, not easier, to live there.

This started with many popular golden visas and citizenship-by-investment programs in countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, and more—either eliminating their programs or making them harder and more expensive to attain. We've also seen this recently in Spain and Portugal with their elimination of the real estate investment option in their golden visa programs.

Italy is the country making headlines, as they just issued a sweeping decree this week immediately changing the qualifications for their citizenship-by-descent option.

Upwards of 80 million people of Italian ancestry could have potentially qualified for this program to be able to use an Italian passport as their plan B—to live in other countries, live in Italy, live in Europe—and now that has been, as of further notice, eliminated, likely permanently.

Now, let's jump into the details of what Italy's new law means.

On March 28th, 2025, the Italian government adopted a new decree known as Law 36. This has basically completely rewritten the rules for obtaining Italian citizenship by descent. Up until now, there was a lot of flexibility. Actually, Italy was known as being one of the easiest countries to qualify for citizenship by descent. You could go back multiple generations, there wasn't a language requirement, and the documentation—especially for a country like Italy that's known for its stringent bureaucracy—was actually quite minimal compared to other countries.

But that has all changed now. What this law does is limit your ability to qualify back to two generations. This means that you need either a parent or a grandparent—not a great-grandparent—to be able to qualify. You also need to show even more ties to Italy, which we'll get into in just a second.

This genuine connection to the country is pretty direct. They want you to have had either a recent residence in Italy or for your parents to have lived in Italy before you were born. They also want you to have full documentation to prove your claim—no more sworn statements or anything like that.

Applications will only be accepted now if you applied before the deadline of March 28th or if you meet the new stricter criteria. That means even if you've been gathering your documents over the past few months, if you hadn't submitted them yet, then you're out of luck.

So a big question you might have is: why did Italy do this, and why now?

The government has said that there are three main reasons. One is national security.It doesn't come as much of a surprise. We're always hearing about countries tightening their borders and cracking down on immigration.

Then there is EU integrity, which we find very interesting. This appears to be their desire to want applicants to show cultural ties to the country and not just be holding a passport and living somewhere else. They want to see that you're going to live in Italy, that you have friends, family, and economic ties there—not just hold this passport as your plan B.

The third reason is administrative overload. We think part of that is due to all of the changes in the world—geopolitical changes, economic uncertainty, especially since the pandemic—along with the rise of social media, YouTube, and the word getting out that this is something people can do.

We didn't really know anyone else who was living this type of lifestyle. But now you can go online, go on YouTube, and find many people living this way—getting second passports and living in other countries. The word is spreading that these options exist, and more and more people have been taking advantage of them.

The Italian government is simply overloaded with applications for Italian citizenship by people who might not have ever stepped foot in Italy, and they are looking to change that. Maybe the local people had something to do with this. Maybe they've been angry.

It states that these changes are designed to discourage opportunistic and speculative applications. In other words, governments here and in other countries are catching on to people getting passports as a kind of game—a plan B to use different passports to travel or relocate when needed.

This is important because Italy is just the latest country in a long list that has made changes to how people can enter and live there. Countries often offer citizenship-by-investment or citizenship-by-descent options to encourage new people to come in, but for national security and economic reasons, many of these policies have backfired or not produced the results governments expected.

We saw this in Portugal with the housing crisis, forcing the government to retract the real estate portion of the golden visa. We saw something similar in Spain. We've seen countries like the UK, Australia, and Canada end citizenship-by-investment programs due to security risks and questionable sources of funds.

In countries with the highest quality of life, there is a clear trend toward reducing the number of pathways to live there. Retirement visas are shrinking, and citizenship-by-descent programs that were once broad are now being rolled back significantly. We've seen changes in Malta, Turkey, and Panama.

As countries reach a critical mass—where they no longer need more foreign residents—we'll likely see prices increase or programs change. Investments that were once $250,000 may rise to $500,000 or $1 million. Retirement visas that once required $1,000 per month may now require $2,500 or $3,000.

Digital nomad visas have opened doors, but many come with high income thresholds to ensure economic stability and protect local jobs. Caribbean countries have also raised the cost of citizenship-by-investment programs.

The writing is on the wall. If you've been thinking about going abroad, it would be wise to start making moves sooner rather than later to keep these pathways open.