Italy citizenship switch leaves family stuck mid-process

Jacqueline Matwick moved from Arizona to Turin in August 2024 to complete an Italian citizenship-by-descent process. Two months later, Italy changed how children were affected by adults’ naturalization, and the family no longer qualified. After a rejection let

In August 2024. Jacqueline Matwick arrived in Turin. hoping the paperwork she had spent years assembling would finally end in a citizenship decision. Her plan had a timeline: get approved within six to eight months. secure a path to work legally. and let her children start the next school year in a new country without uprooting them again.

What happened next was the opposite of timing. Italy changed the citizenship rules before her case was decided, and the family’s eligibility disappeared while they were already living there.

Matwick, 38, had been living in the United States before the move. She spent eight years in Arizona while her husband spent seven years there. and their oldest child was born in New York. She described the strain of early parenthood in New York City—childcare and housing costs pushing them toward constant calculation about affordability.

The financial pressure didn’t end when they tried to adjust their address. In 2020. when their daughter was a year and a half old. the family moved in with Matwick’s in-laws in Arizona. They had expected to stay in Phoenix and buy a house. but housing prices surged. leaving them with the same core problem they’d seen in New York: the numbers still didn’t add up.

That “math wasn’t really working anywhere” feeling pushed Matwick to look beyond the U.S. She began researching Italy because her husband’s family has Italian ancestry. Their goal was citizenship by descent. a process she said took years depending on family lines and how many generations back their Italian ancestry went. She pointed to the paperwork burden: if there are inconsistencies in names or dates. documents must be corrected. which can be tedious.

From when she started looking at the paperwork in 2022 to when everything was corrected. lined up. and stamped in February 2024. Matwick said it took them a year and a half. She described two application routes as well: apply at a consulate in the U.S. (a process she said can take a very long time), or move to Italy and apply. The family chose Italy, moving in August 2024 to finish the process there.

Matwick said Italy created a permit that allowed them to move to the country and apply at their town. because permitting and much of the work is processed locally—town-level procedures rather than centralized ones. She believed the local approach would shorten the route to citizenship and also help them move faster as parents.

A key reason, she said, was timing for the children. If they had done the process in the U.S. their daughter would have been in second or third grade when they uprooted her rather than starting kindergarten in Italy. Matwick said it would also have been harder for her daughter to learn the language later.

The expectation was straightforward. They had anticipated approval within six to eight months. Matwick said that. if approved. her husband and kids would have citizenship. and she could then apply for a permit as the spouse. In her view. that would let them live in Italy as citizens and make it possible for her to legally work there. She also said she understood she could later pursue citizenship herself through a language exam and other requirements.

Then the government changed the rules.

Matwick said there were two law changes, with one occurring in April 2025 but not affecting them in the way that mattered. The shift that hit their family came in October 2024 and related to naturalization—how changes to an adult’s citizenship status can affect any children who are still minors.

Before that October 2024 change. she compared citizenship rules to “lighting a candle.” She explained the logic she believed had governed their situation: when her husband’s great-grandfather had his daughter. the daughter was an Italian citizen; when he later became an American citizen. he stopped being Italian. but citizenship was considered secure through the daughter once she was Italian. In Matwick’s account. nothing he did would affect her. and she could pass that citizenship to her son. who could then pass it to his son.

Italy’s October 2024 change, Matwick said, rewrote that chain. Under the new interpretation, “whatever an adult did affected any children who were still minors.” She said they wouldn’t have moved to Italy if that rule had applied from the beginning, because the family would not have been eligible.

Matwick also described the change as abrupt and not grandfathered. She said the government shifted its interpretation suddenly. and it didn’t grandfather people already in the middle of the process. Her family periodically contacted a lawyer for advice. and she said the lawyer told them there wasn’t much clarity on how people caught in the middle would be treated. The lawyer advised, she said, “Just keep going and see what happens.”.

Their town became another turning point. Matwick said the local authorities told them they were the first people to arrive with the problem of being in the country before officially gaining citizenship and then no longer qualifying. She said an agent gave them what felt like false hope—telling them. “I think you guys are going to be fine because you were already here.”.

She said that hope ended with a letter.

In January 2025, Matwick said they received a rejection letter stating they no longer qualified for Italian citizenship. They then built a new plan: filing a case in court. Even though the law had changed, she said that once there is a case, you can obtain a permit.

Matwick emphasized that the legal fight is still contentious and “not a slam dunk.” Her case, she said, is scheduled for January 2027.

As they wait, Matwick said they are still in Italy, but she and her husband are torn about what comes next. The situation has left them in the same kind of decision-making mode she described from years earlier—trying to figure out where to raise their family.

She said they would like to go back to the U.S. because they miss everyone there. but she also described unease about returning to the conditions that originally pushed them abroad: the affordability pressures they had tried to escape. They are also considering Italy or maybe Spain. Spain. she said. isn’t too far; she even described a practical fall-back—she could drive a U-Haul from Turin if needed.

What guides their thinking now, she said, is simple: the right lifestyle, safety, and security—without being stuck on what she called a “work hamster wheel,” where there is never time to rest as a family.

The sequence of events—years of paperwork culminating in a February 2024 stamp. a move to Turin in August 2024. an October 2024 rule change that removed their eligibility. a January 2025 rejection letter. and a court case scheduled for January 2027—has turned a citizenship plan into a long. expensive pause in their lives. For Matwick. the story is less about travel and more about how quickly policy can redraw a family’s future after it has already uprooted itself.

They’re trying to make it work like everyone else: by choosing a place where their children can settle, their work can be stable, and the next decision won’t be made by a deadline they can’t control.

Italian citizenship citizenship by descent naturalization rules Turin Arizona legal case immigration policy family relocation European residency court scheduled January 2027