When President Javier Milei of Argentina stepped onto the grounds of Giorgia Meloni’s party festival at Rome’s Circus Maximus, a conservative fair that mixed holiday and Italy-First energy, he found a skating rink, a Christmas tree and an upbeat, anti-woke crowd.
But with the visit, he got something more than recordings of Mariah Carey and meetings with Ms. Meloni, the prime minister of Italy and a conservative ally. He also received Italian citizenship.
“More than among friends, I feel like I am with family,” Mr. Milei said onstage at the event.
Mr. Milei, whose grandparents emigrated from Italy to Argentina, received the citizenship because of his bloodline, Italy’s foreign ministry said this week. The announcement sparked some anger among critics of the government in Italy, who have long opposed Italy’s citizenship law for allowing people with distant Italian ancestry to get an Italian passport, but not granting citizenship to children of immigrants born in Italy.
“Granting the Italian citizenship to President Milei is yet another slap in the face to boys and girls who were born here or live here permanently and have been waiting for citizenship for years and years, sometimes without any result,” Riccardo Magi, a liberal opposition lawmaker, wrote on X.
Unlike the United States, Italy does not automatically grant citizenship to children born in its borders, whether or not the child’s parents are here legally.
Liberal forces have proposed a referendum to change the law, but Ms. Meloni’s government has resisted alterations that would relax it. Instead, the Italian authorities have recently updated their interpretation of the citizenship law based on decisions by Italy’s supreme court, making it harder to obtain it through bloodlines.
Because of a huge emigration wave in the end of the 19th century from Italy across the Atlantic, thousands of people in the Americas have been able to obtain Italian citizenship in recent years thanks to their ancestry. Over 900,000 Italian citizens live in Argentina, according to Italy’s national statistics institute. (About 150,000 Italian citizens who were not born in Italy live in the United States.) In recent years, many upper-middle class Argentines have sought a second passport to move abroad and escape the tough economic situation at home.
Mr. Milei has repeatedly expressed pride in his Italian ancestry, often telling the story of his grandparents’ immigration and praising Italian culture. But he has not explained publicly why, as a head of state, he would seek the citizenship of another country. Mr. Milei’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
In an interview with Italian television earlier this year, Mr. Milei said he was passionate about Italian opera and said that he felt he had “75 percent Italian blood” because three of his grandparents were Italian.
Mr. Milei is known for listening to opera while discussing politics with guests at the presidential residence. In an interview this week, he said his favorite Italian operas were “Lucia di Lammermoor,” by Donizetti, and “Norma,” by Bellini. Mr. Milei is Roman Catholic and leads the country of Pope Francis’ birth.
Mr. Milei is not the first Argentine president to have dual citizenship. Mauricio Macri, who led the country from 2015 to 2019, also had an Italian passport, as his father had emigrated from Italy to Argentina at age 18.
Despite some differences in ideological foundations between Mr. Milei, a right-wing libertarian, and Ms. Meloni, a conservative whose party has post-Fascist roots, the two leaders have strengthened ties in recent months, as the Argentine president seeks closer links to other prominent right-wing figures around the world.
Last month, when Ms. Meloni visited Argentina, Mr. Milei gave her a statuette of himself wielding a chain saw, one he used during his campaign to symbolize the slashing he planned for the nation’s government. He said that he and Ms. Meloni acknowledged “common challenges” and held similar views on the importance of law enforcement, private property, the protection of families and opposition to excessive bureaucracy and the “woke virus.”
Ms. Meloni, who introduced Mr. Milei at the festival on Saturday, said that the two shared an opposition to welfare payments and believe that work is the only way to fight poverty.
When they met on Friday, Mr. Meloni said she and Mr. Milei discussed a common desire to further strengthen their bilateral partnership, especially with regards to the fight against transnational organized crime. They also addressed Italy’s desire to increase its economic and commercial presence in Argentina, starting from the energy sector, she said.
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