I am not that angry about the vote, most of them don't care, the voting cards usually get in/out too late for their vote to be considered, anyway. Plus we have a representative system, so they maybe get one of two people out of 200 sitting in the Parliament.
But could you imagine a group for US citizens in Buenos Aires where everything is in Spanish? No way!
And Italians are always parading and showing off that they are Italians. You always hear "Oh, my grandma, she was Italian, from XXX, she used to cook me YYY, I still cook that, too, but I have never been to Italy, maybe one day...".
Yeah, okay, so this plate of pasta entitles you double citizenship for a plate for pasta?!
There are people living in Italy and struggling to get papers to stay in the country legally, and abroad they give out citizenship for free.
I am just pissed that being the common denominator of the COMITES the "Italianness", the language is not Italian. They are no help to me, if I cannot comunicate with them.
Let's call it "the representation of Italian descendants" but not of Italians. Let's make it a cultural association, but not a political representations of Italians abroad.
And you have to consider that for them to get a European citizenship, it just takes some old paperwork, whereas if you want to move to their country (I am speaking in general, not only about Argentina), you have to pull up the ropes, wait for years, ask for permits, etc. How is this fair?
Some examples: my MIL (in Italy) is currently helping an Argentinian lady to collect her long dead relatives' papers to get Italian citizenship. She has no real program to come to Italy, maybe she will come on holiday once just to say she used her passport. She doesn't know a thing about Italy, so if she even imagine to retire there, I doubt she knows how expensive it would be.
I had a class mate from Albania who had been in Italy for 10 years and had to present study papers every year to get his permit. When he finally met the requisite of continue presence in the country to ask for citizenship, it took the Italian government almost 2 years to take his application for review.
On this forum we read a post about a girl wanting to get married with a UK citizen, and she held Argentinian and Italian citizenships. In her situation, to marry in the UK on her Italian passport meant so little paperwork compared to marry as an Argentinian, but she was not familiar with the (little) Italian bureaucracy involved since "she never set foot in Italy".
What I say is: keep the bureaucracy occupied with those who ACTUALLY need the paperworks done quickly, not just for some Italian-descendant who want to have a passport with a red cover.
Recently, a €300 fee to apply for Italian citizenship was instituted to try to prevent people to apply for citizenship iure sanguining "leisurely". It caused flaming discussions about how this constitute a way to prevent them from their right to claim citizenship, etc.
Now, I hope it is clear why I am fed up with Italy and Italians.
