Why 73% of Americans Who Get Italian Citizenship Never Actually Move – The Reality Check After the Paperwork

The Italian passport arrived in a nondescript envelope. Three years of research, $8,000 in legal fees and document preparation, countless hours navigating Italian bureaucracy from across an ocean. I’d proven my great-grandfather’s lineage, tracked down records from crumbling Italian municipal archives, gotten everything apostilled and translated by sworn translators.

I was officially Italian.

I was also, eight years later, still living in Phoenix.

This puts me in surprisingly common company. According to estimates from relocation consultants and Italian-American community organizations, roughly three-quarters of Americans who obtain Italian citizenship through ancestry never relocate to Italy or even use their passport extensively.

We spend years and thousands of dollars pursuing citizenship in a country we don’t actually move to.

This would seem irrational. But after watching dozens of fellow citizenship-seekers complete the process, I’ve come to understand exactly why the pattern exists—and it’s not irrational at all.

The Official Numbers

In 2023, over 61,000 people obtained Italian citizenship through jure sanguinis (right of blood). Brazilians accounted for 68.5% of these (over 42,000 people), with Argentinians next at approximately 16,000. Americans represent a smaller but significant portion of the overall number.

More telling is what happens after: the vast majority of new Italian citizens don’t establish Italian residency. They don’t file Italian taxes. They don’t vote in Italian elections. They renew their passports every 10 years and otherwise maintain no active connection to Italy.

The Italian government noticed this pattern, which partly drove the recent citizenship law changes. Under the Tajani Decree (Law 74/2025, effective May 2025), citizenship by descent is now limited to parents and grandparents only—no more great-grandparents or earlier generations. The door that millions of us walked through has largely closed.

But for those who obtained citizenship before the changes, the question remains: why didn’t we move?

Reason 1: The Citizenship Was Never About Moving

This is the foundational explanation, and it’s more honest than most citizenship-seekers will publicly admit.

Italian citizenship by descent offered something extraordinary: an EU passport obtained without meeting any residency, language, or financial requirements. For Americans, this was unique. Other countries with citizenship-by-descent programs (Ireland, Poland, Germany) have more restrictions or less useful passports. Italy offered maximum benefit with minimal conditions.

The benefit wasn’t “living in Italy.” The benefit was:

• Travel flexibility: Visa-free access to 175+ countries. EU airport lines. No ESTA paperwork for Europe.
• Insurance against American instability: A backup option if political, economic, or social conditions in the US deteriorated.
• EU work rights: The theoretical ability to work anywhere in the EU without visa sponsorship.
• Generational gift: Citizenship passed automatically to children born after the parent’s recognition.
• Identity connection: A tangible link to ancestry that felt meaningful even without relocation.

For many of us, these benefits were valuable independent of any intention to move. The citizenship was the point, not what we’d do with it.

Reason 2: Italian Wages Are Catastrophic

The moment you consider actually working in Italy, the economics become brutal.

Average Italian salaries are approximately 30-40% lower than equivalent positions in the United States, while taxes are comparable or higher. A software engineer earning $150,000 in California might earn €45,000-55,000 in Milan. A marketing manager making $95,000 in Chicago might make €35,000-42,000 in Rome.

Meanwhile, Italian cost of living, while lower than US averages, isn’t 40% lower. Housing in Rome, Milan, or Florence rivals or exceeds many American cities. Food is cheaper; healthcare is cheaper; but the salary cut isn’t compensated.

Americans with Italian citizenship who work remotely for US employers can theoretically capture the best of both worlds—US wages, Italian living costs. But Italian tax residency rules are strict: spend more than 183 days per year in Italy and you owe Italian taxes on worldwide income. Those Italian taxes, with a top marginal rate of 43% plus regional surcharges, often exceed what Americans would pay in the US.

The math works beautifully for retirement, where you’re spending savings rather than earning income. It works terribly for working-age adults building careers.

Reason 3: The Language Barrier Is Higher Than Expected

Every American with Italian heritage believes they’ll pick up the language easily. Our grandmothers spoke it. We grew up eating the food. We watched Italian cinema in college.

Then we try to have a conversation with an actual Italian, and reality intervenes.

Italian is easier for English speakers than some languages, but it’s not easy. Achieving professional fluency takes 600-750 hours of study according to the Foreign Service Institute. That’s 2-3 years of dedicated effort for most adult learners.

Without fluency, your life in Italy is limited:

• Most professional jobs require native-level Italian
• Government bureaucracy is conducted entirely in Italian
• Healthcare communication is in Italian
• Banking, utilities, legal matters—all Italian
• Social integration depends on language

You can live in Italy without fluent Italian, but you’ll live as a permanent outsider. You’ll work remote American jobs. You’ll socialize with other expats. You’ll never fully integrate.

For many citizenship-holders, this limitation doesn’t matter—they weren’t planning to move anyway. For those who considered it seriously, the language barrier proved more daunting than anticipated.

Reason 4: Careers Can’t Transfer

American professionals in their 30s, 40s, and 50s have accumulated career capital: relationships, reputation, domain expertise, seniority. This capital is largely non-transferable.

A lawyer admitted to practice in New York cannot practice law in Italy without re-qualifying. A healthcare professional’s licenses don’t transfer. A business executive’s relationships are geographically bounded.

Even in fields without formal credential barriers, starting over in a new country means starting over professionally. Your American network doesn’t help you in Milan. Your reputation doesn’t precede you. Your domain expertise may be less relevant in a European market.

Some professions translate well: software engineering, remote-friendly roles, creative work, entrepreneurship. Most don’t. The people most likely to have the resources and motivation to pursue Italian citizenship are often least able to uproot their careers.

Reason 5: Family Ties Don’t Relocate

The Americans who pursue Italian citizenship are typically middle-aged or older. They have established lives: children in local schools, elderly parents needing proximity, spouses with careers, grandchildren arriving.

Moving to Italy would mean:

• Leaving children and grandchildren an ocean away
• Being unable to help aging parents
• Uprooting spouses who didn’t sign up for expatriation
• Abandoning social networks built over decades

The people with the strongest motivation to claim Italian heritage (those who remember Italian-speaking grandparents, who grew up in Italian-American communities) are often least mobile. They’re embedded in American life in ways that make European relocation impractical.

Younger Americans without these ties are more mobile but less interested in ancestry citizenship. The mismatch is structural.

Reason 6: Italy Is Hard

Living in Italy as a resident, rather than a tourist, means confronting aspects of Italian life that vacationers never see:

Bureaucracy: Italian bureaucracy is notoriously complex, slow, and frustrating. Even with citizenship, you’ll face endless paperwork for residency registration, tax compliance, healthcare enrollment, and daily life logistics.

Economy: Italy has struggled economically for decades. Youth unemployment remains high. Economic growth lags European averages. The dynamism that characterizes American economic life is largely absent.

Infrastructure: Internet speeds lag. Public services are inconsistent. Things that work effortlessly in America require patience in Italy.

Social rigidity: Italian society has established hierarchies and expectations. Breaking into professional and social circles takes time and connections. Americans accustomed to meritocratic mobility can find Italian social structures frustrating.

Regional variation: Italy is remarkably diverse internally. Living in Milan is nothing like living in Naples. The “Italy” you fell in love with on vacation may not match the “Italy” where circumstances allow you to live.

None of these factors make Italy a bad place to live. But they make it a harder place to live than vacation experiences suggested. The gap between “I love visiting Italy” and “I want to live in Italy permanently” is wider than most people realize until they research seriously.

Reason 7: The Citizenship Itself Satisfied the Need

There’s a psychological dimension to ancestry citizenship that doesn’t require physical relocation.

For many Italian-Americans, the citizenship process involves deep engagement with family history: finding birth certificates, marriage records, naturalization documents. You learn where your great-grandparents came from, why they left, what their lives were like. You establish a documented connection to a heritage that had become abstract.

The passport that arrives at the end of this process represents something beyond travel convenience. It’s tangible proof that you belong to something larger than yourself, that your family story connects to European history, that your identity has roots you can trace.

For some people, that symbolic satisfaction is enough. The citizenship proves what they wanted to prove. Moving to Italy would be nice but isn’t necessary for the identity work the process accomplished.

Reason 8: Life Happened

Many citizenship applicants started the process during particular moments: career transitions, empty-nest periods, pandemic lockdowns that prompted life re-evaluation.

By the time citizenship was granted (often 2-5 years later), circumstances had changed. The job you planned to leave became more interesting. The relationship you were drifting from reconnected. The health that seemed certain declined. Children had children of their own.

Italian citizenship was pursued during one chapter of life and received during another. The you who started the process wanted different things than the you who completed it.

What Actually Happens to Those Passports

So what do the 73% who don’t move actually do with their Italian citizenship?

Occasional travel: The citizenship makes European travel marginally easier—shorter passport lines, longer allowed stays. Most people use it at least occasionally.

Children’s options: Citizenship passes to children born after recognition. Even if parents don’t move, children have future options the parents didn’t have.

Psychological insurance: The passport in a drawer represents an exit option, even if never exercised. For some, simply having it reduces anxiety about American futures.

Very occasional use: Some people spend a month or two in Italy periodically, or visit elderly relatives in Europe, or use EU work rights for temporary projects.

Nothing: A significant number of people never use their Italian citizenship at all. The passport sits in a safe, renewed every decade, never stamped.

The Law Changes and What They Mean

Italy’s recent citizenship law changes (the Tajani Decree, Law 74/2025) eliminate citizenship by descent through great-grandparents or earlier generations. Only those with Italian parents or grandparents now qualify, with additional requirements around exclusive Italian citizenship at relevant times.

This affects millions of potential applicants, particularly in the Americas where most Italian emigration occurred 3-4+ generations ago.

The timing is ironic: Italy restricted ancestry citizenship precisely because so many recipients weren’t moving, weren’t integrating, weren’t becoming “real” Italians. The passport-convenience-seeking that characterized most American applications helped end the program.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was blunt: “Being an Italian citizen is a serious thing. It’s not a game to get a passport that allows you to go shopping in Miami.”

He’s right. But he’s also describing exactly what most of us wanted the passport for.

The Honest Conclusion

I have Italian citizenship. I live in Phoenix. I’ve used my Italian passport perhaps a dozen times in eight years, mostly for airport convenience.

Do I regret pursuing it? No.

Do I feel like I misrepresented my intentions to the Italian government? Slightly.

Would I do it again? Absolutely.

The citizenship gave me what I actually wanted: optionality, connection to heritage, and a travel convenience. It didn’t give me what the Italian government presumably hoped I wanted: a new citizen who would contribute to Italian society.

That gap between what applicants want and what Italy hoped for explains both the appeal of the program and its eventual restriction.

The 73% who don’t move aren’t failing to follow through on a plan. They’re succeeding at a plan that was always about the passport, not the relocation.

The Italian government eventually figured this out. Whether you view the law changes as justified recognition of reality or unfortunate restriction of heritage rights depends on which side of the closed door you’re standing on.

I got in before it closed. The citizenship sits in my drawer, occasionally useful, symbolically meaningful, never the life-changing relocation tool the romantic in me once imagined.

That’s fine. It was always going to be fine.

The 73% of us who didn’t move aren’t hypocrites or dreamers who chickened out. We’re people who accurately assessed what Italian citizenship would and wouldn’t give us, pursued it for the things it would give, and never seriously planned the things it wouldn’t.

The passport works exactly as we intended. We just never intended to live in Italy.