Descendants of Italians, entry for work
The reform of 2025 which limited the recognition of citizenship by descent opened at the same time a door for the descendants whose line it closed: a person who descends from an Italian citizen and holds the citizenship of a country of major Italian emigration enters Italy for employment outside the quotas, at any time of the year, under paragraph 1-octies of article 27 of the consolidated act. The decree of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of 17 November 2025, published on 24 November, names the countries: Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Australia, Canada, Venezuela and Uruguay, those with more than one hundred thousand citizens registered in the AIRE.
The route
The applicant proves the descent from an Italian citizen with the certificates of the line, as in a file for recognition, and the citizenship of one of the seven countries, and the Italian employer requests the nulla osta at the Sportello Unico of the Prefecture under the ordinary procedure of article 22, without waiting for a click day and without a quota. The visa for employment follows at the consulate, and the permit at the Sportello Unico within eight working days of the entry, with the contract of stay. The law fixes no limit of generations, and the descendant of a great-grandparent who left Italy in 1900 qualifies as the child of an Italian does, provided the descent is proved. The decree for the flows of 2026 to 2028 adds fifty places a year of self-employment for workers of Italian origin up to the third degree, ten of them for residents of Venezuela.
From the residence to the citizenship
The entry for work does not confer the citizenship, and it is not meant to. It gives the descendant whose line is closed under article 3-bis the legal residence which article 9 of the citizenship law requires for the naturalisation: two years of registered residence with a valid permit for the child or grandchild of an Italian citizen by birth, after the reform of 2025, and ten years for the more distant descendants, with the B1 certificate of Italian, the income and the clean record. The page on citizenship by residence describes the application, and the page on citizenship by descent explains which lines remain open to recognition. A citizen of the United Kingdom who descends from an Italian is outside the decree, because the United Kingdom is not among the seven countries, and enters under the ordinary visas of this section.
The tourism of the roots
There is no visa for the tourism of the roots. The programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offers a platform and a card to the descendants who visit the places of their family, open to everyone whatever the citizenship, within the ninety days of a visitor.
An engineer in Buenos Aires, great-grandson of a man from Piedmont, whose line is closed under article 3-bis because his father and grandfather were Argentine from birth, receives an offer from a company in Turin in 2027. The company requests the nulla osta at the Sportello Unico in March, on the proof of his descent and of his Argentine citizenship, he obtains the visa in Buenos Aires in May and the permit in Turin in June. After ten years of residence he applies for naturalisation, or after two if his father, an Italian citizen by birth, had been recognised.
If you descend from an Italian citizen, live in one of the seven countries and have an offer of work in Italy, or you wish to find one, send us the family line and the documents you hold. We tell you whether the recognition is still open to you, and otherwise how the entry for work and the naturalisation by residence are prepared.