According to the latest Istat and Eurostat data, a total of 133,236 foreigners acquired Italian citizenship in 2022 (50.9 percent females and 49.1 percent males), 9.7 percent more than in 2021, when 121,457 new citizens were registered. On average, one out of every 38 resident foreigners became Italian in 2022. Over the past decade, this has risen from the lows of 2012 (65,383) to the peaks of 2015 with 178,035 and 2016 with 201,591 acquisitions, then fell to 146,605 the following year (2017) and 112,523 in 2018, and finally tended to rise again - albeit to a lesser extent - during the last four years. In 2021 (latest data available) to obtain Italian citizenship were mainly Albanians (22,493), Moroccans (16,588), Romanians (9,435), Brazilians (5,460), Bangladeshis (5. 116), Indians (4,489), Pakistanis (4,410), Argentines (3,669, more than double the number in 2020, when there were 1,717), Moldovans (3,633) and Egyptians (3,531). The high number of acquisitions by Brazilians and Argentines is due to the possibility of naturalization by ius sanguinis, that is, through the presence of Italian ancestors.
|