American Immigration Policy Could Learn From Modern Italy, Ancient Rome, and Plato

New winds are shaping conversations about citizenship in the U.S. and Europe.

As the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the Trump administration’s constitutional argument for tighter birthright citizenship, Italy’s Constitutional Court has already signed off on a law raising the bar for would-be citizens. Italy’s rationale is instructive for the U.S., whose prow seems pointed toward consequences the Italian government is now trying to correct.

Italy’s new law renders citizenship less touristy and likelier to indicate meaningful membership of the self-governing society within its borders. By contrast, in the U.S., the citizen/noncitizen distinction is losing substance within America’s permeable borders and beleaguered immigration enforcement.

Although how tightly countries should draw circles around citizenries is debatable, whether citizenship ought to be a meaningful distinction should be a settled question. But in present-day America, it’s not. That’s a problem.

Diluting citizenship as a meaningful distinction threatens democracies and empires alike. This is as true today in Italy and the U.S. as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.

Countries can become and will longer remain what they ought to be—just, self-governing societies—by ensuring citizenship means something real within their borders.

Italy’s New Citizenship Restrictions

Since its formation as a unified country in 1861, Italy has granted citizenship to people descended from at least one Italian citizen—even if their closest link was a great-great-grandparent. This constitutional principle is jus sanguinis, meaning “right of blood.” Until recently, applicants have not been required to speak Italian, reside in Italy, or pay the taxes that come with living there.

That changed in March 2026, when the Italian Constitutional Court upheld the “Tajani Decree” over lower-court objections.

A new two-generation limit now requires applicants to trace their ancestry to a parent’s or a grandparent’s Italian citizenship. Additionally, that family member’s citizenship must be (or have been) exclusively Italian, not dually held with another country. New applicants must also, as my Grandma Gargiulo, 91, says, “talk Italian good.”

Media vs. Administration

As in the U.S., in Italy the administration’s policy has rankled the media more than, well … citizens.

Although applications submitted before the policy’s adoption are grandfathered in as valid, relatively few who intended to apply have missed their chance. Some would-be Italians within this vocal minority are now out significant time and money that they spent preparing to apply under the old rules. But most of the outrage appears feigned by media with little or no stake in the policy change.

In fact, most coverage ignores why it may be wise for Italy to draw a tighter circle, if only to reduce fraud and inefficiency. “Nationality cannot simply be a tool for traveling to Miami with a European passport,” stated Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, for whom the new law is named.

Besides clogging the system, the ratio of potential applicants to actual Italian residents is absurdly disproportional. Until 2025, some 60 million to 80 million Italian descendants worldwide could have applied for citizenship—in a country of 61 million residents. Scaled to America’s population of 342 million, the same loosely drawn circle could invite up to 513 million people worldwide to apply for citizenship with a reasonable presumption of acceptance.

In short, having offered citizenship too loosely for decades, Italy is now making citizenship mean something more.

Strength of Distinction

If Italy’s citizen/noncitizen distinction is waxing stronger, America’s is waning. But challenges posed by U.S. immigration, law, and enforcement have weakened citizenship as a definition—if not de jure, then de facto. Officials dilute citizenship as a meaningful distinction when they fail to enforce—or even to regard—citizenship as a vehicle for appropriately conferring rights on lawful citizens and, just as appropriately, not on others.

Despite moving in contrary directions, Italy’s policy oddly parallels America’s own citizenship policy—which is so hotly contested, it has become fused with immigration and law enforcement policy. The similarities go beyond lopsided media coverage.

Although America does not share Italy’s “right of blood” policy, something like it is the historically-enforced interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Just this month, the Trump administration argued before the Supreme Court that the U.S. currently construes this amendment too broadly, and that the nation thus too casually confers citizenship on people born within its borders—including babies planted by cartel lords and the Chinese Communist Party.

Thus, Italy and the U.S. occupy different spots on a timeline. Though the younger country, Italy has already reached its threshold of pain caused by a weak citizenship distinction. Despite residing in a country that has reached its 250th year, Americans sharply disagree about whether their nation’s own pain threshold for weakly distinguishing citizens from noncitizens lies behind or ahead.

3 American Positions

Broadly speaking, Americans take any of three positions on citizenship and immigration law. One faction maintains sharp distinctions between the legal status and rights of citizens versus noncitizens, and it would prosecute violations. This faction accepts that although some good would-be citizens may be excluded, a country must draw the line somewhere. This position roughly parallels the Italian government’s today.

The second American faction accepts citizenship distinctions and immigration law enforcement in theory, but—like opponents of Italy’s new law—it wants to make the distinctions fewer and softer. For example, in the past, the U.S. has granted legal amnesty to illegal immigrants who have flown under the radar long enough. Essentially, this concession rewarded illegal aliens for not making trouble. This second American faction accepts the risk of incidentally awarding amnesty to some number of bad actors, including potential threats to American safety and security: Every lot has a few bad apples.

The third faction eyes distinctions between citizens and noncitizens as dubious, even irrelevant, particularly regarding who has a right to live in America. This faction’s root objection is not to how, but to whether citizen/noncitizen distinctions are to be enforced. Changing the law would be nice; disregarding current law is easier and faster. Hence, much of the outcry against the Trump administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The objections are not merely to the Trump administration’s methods (although their occasional madness makes a decent scapegoat). The real objection is to distinguishing citizens from noncitizens at all.

Classical Cautionary Tales

The American faction that minimizes citizen distinctions accepts the security risks of practically open borders. Revealingly, this position has no corresponding champion in Italy’s jus sanguinis controversy. But the Italian nation’s ancestors tried it before. It went poorly.

In 212 A.D., Caracalla (successor to Commodus of “Gladiator” infamy) granted citizenship to all free residents of the Roman Empire, instantly naturalizing 30 million people living between Scotland and Syria. But “citizenship, once granted, became irrelevant,” writes Cambridge University’s Mary Beard in her epilogue to “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome” (2015). “For no sooner had one barrier of privilege been removed than another was put up in its place, on very different terms … with unequal rights formally written into Roman law. … The new boundary between insiders and outsiders followed the line of wealth, class, and status.” Simply put, when governments erase citizenship distinctions, the people invent new ones—often unjust ones.

Writing from Athens 500 years earlier, Plato predicted similar trouble with eroding citizen/noncitizen distinctions. He listed it as a step in a democracy’s descent down the slippery slope from self-government to despotism. As the “infection of anarchy” spreads, Plato wrote in the “Republic,” “citizens, resident aliens, and strangers from abroad are all on an equal footing.” (Eerily, the U.S. is also losing other distinctions that Plato says doom a democracy, e.g., authority of parent over child, of teacher over student, of human over animal).

Like ancient history and political philosophy, America has its own tales cautioning against minimizing citizenship’s distinction. Undeniably, enforcing U.S. citizenship and immigration law comes with its share of tragedies. But more obviously—because more frequently—so does failure to enforce these laws, resulting in compromised borders, fraud, addiction, and violence.

That is why Italy’s decision to draw a tighter and more solid circle around citizenship is so instructive to Americans. Italy’s present (soon to be past) problem depicts the future of the U.S. Each day the U.S. draws a looser and more perforated circle around citizenship, the meaning of citizenship becomes less recognizable. The consequences of America’s too permeable circle were foreshadowed by Italy in 1861-2025, epitomized by third-century Rome, and forewarned in Plato’s Academy.

This is not to say the Italian administration’s policy or the Trump administration’s enforcement cannot be improved. Most policies can be. But U.S. citizenship and immigration policy will only deteriorate—and will continue to write preventable tragedies—if Americans feel squeamish about maintaining citizenship as a meaningful distinction, albeit with charity for all and with malice toward none.

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