The first to raise the alarm in Giorgia Meloni’s government was the Minister of Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti, in 2023. Regarding Italy’s demographic crisis – for almost 10 years, less than half a million children have been born each year – Giorgetti warned that if the numbers do not change, in 2042 our country will lose 18 percent of its Gross Domestic Product: in short, we will live in a catastrophic Italy without industries, with a collapsing health system and pensions, a frightening mortality rate of the elderly, unemployed young people and probably emigrants. Yes, our children and grandchildren would emigrate again.

Perhaps the right represented by Matteo Salvini, who will be 69 years old in 2042, could rejoice because he would have solved the problem – a problem, according to them – of immigration: only kamikazes could in fact choose a starving Italy as their destination.

There has been no rush to have Italian children

It is also true that children conceived this year will only be 17 years old in 2042: in short, they should not participate in the production chain, but study, train, grow, unless we want to bring us back to the plague of child labor. Perhaps this is also why, from the alarm of Minister Giorgetti to today, we have not seen the many Matteo, Giorgia, Arianna, Roberto (Vannacci) biblically working to repopulate the country with little Italians.

It should also be said that the 18 percent collapse of GDP will not occur at midnight on December 31, 2041. The decline has already begun: the current crisis in the health system, the difficulty in finding money to pay pensions, the lack of economic growth, private investment reduced to an exception, the decline in consumption, the effects on production, the emigration of young graduates that has already begun, the aging of the population. The equivalence should be familiar to us: fewer births, fewer future workers, fewer social security contributions, less production, less tax revenue: this leads to the collapse of any nation. What to do then?

Why the Left’s “ius tutto” is dangerous

Elly Schlein’s left proposes the introduction in Italy of the right of the soil (ius soli), even if mitigated: it provides that Italian citizenship is acquired by being born on the territory of the State. Germany introduced it at the beginning of the millennium, with a tempered ius soli that offers German citizenship to those who are born and have at least one parent resident for 8 years, even if not German.

The right of pure soil can in fact have many contraindications. In my investigative work on the migratory routes from Africa to Europe I have met many traffickers, brokers, “travel” agents and I imagine what their response would be to make more money: they could earn money by increasing the irregular crossings of pregnant women who, with the birth of their Italian child in Italy, would in turn acquire the legal right to stay. This is why the pure ius soli, which a part of the left would like, could have uncontrollable effects.

The “ius niente” of Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini

The current alternative, which seems to be the situation preferred by Meloni and Salvini, is “ius niente”. That is, doing nothing and maintaining the situation that exists: Italian citizenship is now based on the principle of blood right (ius sanguinis), according to which only the child born to at least one of the two Italian parents is Italian. All the others, children or adolescents, become Italian only after reaching the age of eighteen, at the end of a long bureaucratic process.

Italians are becoming extinct like dinosaurs – by A. Rovellini

It does not mean that the State then refuses to grant citizenship, even if for some geopolitical origins the approval is not automatic. But the current situation of blood rights imposes on approximately one million and 300 thousand children of immigrants – parents who live regularly, work and pay taxes in our country – not to be Italian: that is, not to be equal to their schoolmates, in sports competitions, in everyday life.

The disparity between boys in sports and at school

Teachers know well how complicated it is sometimes to take students who only have a residence permit on a trip abroad and how humiliating this is for the kids. Especially if the parents’ residence permit is about to expire and the documents for expatriation are not issued. Sports enthusiasts know it well too: the law prevents federations from enrolling kids who are not Italian citizens in training courses for coaches and instructors, even if they are champions in their discipline and were born in Italy.

They pay taxes, but they are not Italians – by Charlotte Matteini

All this, above all, fuels that sense of discrimination, inequality, diversity that penalizes the children of immigrants in school, in sports, in everyday life. Sometimes, it is true, it can be an alibi not to feel accepted: that which pushes many non-Italian kids to drop out of school and join neighborhood gangs. But for many, the precariousness of their status is a contributory cause of failure, isolation, disappointment that reduces performance and the level of results, as many studies demonstrate. In other words, does it make sense to bring a boy or girl to the end of compulsory schooling, to the final exam or even to a degree in Italy and also teach them our culture, if we then continue to consider them foreigners?

The courageous idea of ​​Minister Antonio Tajani

The current citizenship law, which was written to welcome the children of our emigrants abroad as Italians, is now a brake on that part of the young population that is already here and that, if we manage to make them feel Italian, will be on the front lines with all the other young people to avoid the collapse of Italy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani (pictured above), has had the political courage to affirm all this in recent days, proposing an alternative to the ius niente of the right and the ius tutto of the left: it is called the right to education (ius scholae).

A rule that would offer citizenship, according to Forza Italia’s idea, to students who complete the ten-year cycle of compulsory schooling: so that they can face higher education or the world of work with the awareness that they can count on themselves and on the country that considers them full citizens. A principle not only of common sense, but also required by the business world, now sunk by absurd bureaucratic practices, every time they have to hire or send their non-Italian employees abroad. Be they workers or engineers.

Because Vannacci would also have something to gain from it

Roberto Vannacci would also have something to gain, because he would continue to find somatic arguments for his counter-thought. But the one proposed by Minister Tajani would be the first concrete and intelligent step to counter the inexorable decline of Italy, predicted by a right-wing minister like Giorgetti. And not only by him.

The Disappearance of Italians – by Fabrizio Gatti

We should be consistent with reality: a nation of pink cuticles like mine, which no longer has children, needs anyone who wants to recognize themselves under the same flag. Julio Velasco (pictured above), winning the gold medal at the Paris Olympics, has just shown us: let’s learn from the volleyball girls, all together they still have a lot to teach us.

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