Headlines
Indian woman's Italian 'not good enough' for citizenship
Rome, March 2
An Indian national has been
barred from completing the process towards gaining Italian citizenship
by a mayor who argued that her language skills are not up to scratch,
despite her living in the country for 15 years, a media report said
Monday.
Pushpa Rani, 56, was blocked from citizenship by the
mayor of Cairate, in northern Italy, who stopped her from swearing the
oath of allegiance by arguing that her Italian was not good enough, The
Local news portal reported.
The oath was to be Pushpa Rani's last
step towards gaining citizenship, after getting all the necessary
approval from Italian authorities.
Mayor Paolo Mazzucchelli, from the anti-immigration Northern League party, instead advised her to take a language course.
An Indian citizen, Pushpa Rani has lived in Italy for 15 years and said she struggles with learning the country’s language.
Stating
that she has not been allowed to take the oath of citizenship, she
said: "Now I’ve spent two months in an Italian school, and my language
skills are getting better.â€
Pushpa Rani now has until Sunday to swear the oath of allegiance, after which her citizenship application will be void.
Her
lawyer accused Mazzucchelli of failing to perform his official duties
and said the case would be taken to court if Pushpa Rani was not allowed
to swear the oath imminently.
Pushpa Rani’s husband Kuman, who is already an Italian citizen, said he wanted his and his wife’s “rights to be respectedâ€.
But
Mazzucchelli said that there was “no discrimination†in his decision to
block Pushpa Rani from citizenship, arguing that he performs weekly
citizenship tests for people who speak Italian.
“A person that
swears the oath to obtain Italian citizenship must know how to speak
Italian. As foreseen in law, they must know how to read the
constitution," Mazzucchelli said.
“Pushpa Rani was still not
ready. I, therefore, suggested, during a friendly meeting in which her
daughter and son-in-law were present, to enroll in an Italian course. If
she is ready to recite the phrase in Italian, there’s no opposition on
my part,†he added.