They moved to Italy to claim their citizenship. Then they were told they were no longer citizens | CNN

When Kellen Matwick, his wife Jacqueline and their two children boarded a one-way flight to Italy in August 2024, they toasted their new life. Matwick, whose great-grandparents emigrated from central Italy to Pennsylvania, is part of the vast Italian diaspora. He’s also one of the millions who saw his hopes dashed when the Italian government changed its laws around citizenship by descent a year ago, on March 28, 2025 — a move that was reinforced this month when Italy’s constitutional court gave notice that it would reject the first legal argument against the law. When it introduced the law by emergency decree, the government cited the spiraling numbers of citizens by descent who had never lived in Italy. But for Matwick, the new law — introduced without warning in March 2025 — hasn’t just dashed his hopes for the future. It has also torpedoed his day-to-day life. He is one of many members of the diaspora who had moved to Italy to begin the process of reclaiming their citizenship — only to have the rules change before the paperwork was completed. And with no grace period for those who were already in the country working through initial steps of the process that culmina