According to article 9 of the Republican Act no. 91/98, Italian citizenship can be given to any foreigner that lived in the country in a certain amount of years. Europeans are required not less than 4 years while non-europeans are required with no less than 10 years. Foreigners who came from stateless countries are required with not less than 5 years.
Since May 18,2015 the application for an Italian citizenship by residency can be submitted online through the website of the Ministry of Interior (https://cittadinanza.dlci.interno.it/sicitt/index2.jsp). The following scanned documents should come with the filled form:
- Passport
- Permesso di soggiorno
- Authenticated birth certificate with legalized translation that comes with it
- Authenticated NBI clearance with legalized translation that comes with it
- Receipt of payment
- Serial number of the e-stamp that costs 16 euros
Other information such as monthly salary can be done with a self- certification.
The processing of your submitted documents would take 730 days or 2 years after receiving of the documents. If they are able to find you suitable then they would communicate with you within 90 days upon receiving the decreto di cittadinanza from the authorities. After you have received your decree, you have to go the the Municiple within 6 months in order to take your oath to the Republic. If you are unable to do your oath within this allotted time, your decree would then hold no value within 6 months and you have to resend your documents again.
If and when your application would then fail to get received or if the website would shut down, the citizenship residency would undergo two processes. First step would be the inspection of your documents by the Perfecture in which thy would check if your documents fit to the requirements needed for the application. After this, the application would then go through the Ministry of Interior in which they would again recheck your documents and would give you the second opinion of its suitability.
The Italian law also gives dual citizenship to its residents. The original citizenships of the applicants would then be gone thus the reason why Filipinos who become naturalized Italian should go through again the process of the Philippine Citizenship Re-acquisition.
