When we talk about Italian citizenship and international mobility, many immediately think of the bureaucratic hurdles, overlooking the deep interplay of history, identity, and fundamental rights at their core. Amid recent regulatory developments, referrals to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the impact of new technologies on legal practice, securing the recognition of these rights today requires an approach that is strategic, flexible, and rigorous all at once.
In this interview, Attorney Salvatore Aprigliano, founder of Aprigliano International Law Firm, breaks down the transformation of the sector—from the irreplaceable value of human reasoning compared to Artificial Intelligence, to the stark gap between the timelines of the justice system and the real-world needs of those who choose to invest or live in Italy.
Mr. Aprigliano, let’s start from the beginning. Why did you decide to pursue this career, and is it what you dreamed of doing as a child?
I think I decided to become a lawyer during a philosophy class in high school.
My teacher was explaining a simple but powerful idea: living together requires rules. We give up a certain degree of absolute freedom because rules make an organized and safer society possible.
That idea stayed with me. I remember thinking that if so much of our lives is shaped by rules and principles, then one of the most interesting things I could do was learn how they work and understand the reasoning behind them.
Since then, I have never seen law as a collection of rules to memorize. I see it as a system with its own logic. What fascinated me then, and still fascinates me today, is understanding why a rule exists and what principle stands behind it.
Why did you choose to dedicate your career specifically to immigration and citizenship law, a field so deeply charged with both human and legal implications?
I was drawn to immigration and citizenship law because these are areas where the law can change the course of someone’s life. I feel that responsibility very strongly, and it makes the work much more personal for me.
There is also a family reason.
My father left Southern Italy in the early 1960s and moved north. I was born and raised in Northern Italy and I have never lived in the South, but part of my identity comes from there. It came to me through my father and my grandparents: their values, their stories, their culture, even the way we lived as a family.
It is difficult to explain, but very real. You can belong completely to the place where you were born and raised and still feel that another place is also part of who you are, even if you have never lived there.
I think that helps me understand the Italian diaspora. Roots can be geographically distant, or several generations back, and still be part of your identity.
When I speak with a descendant of Italians, I often see exactly that: someone looking for legal recognition of a part of their history that they have carried with them for a long time.
Aprigliano International Law Firm is often described as an “innovative legal boutique.” How do you successfully bridge these two apparent opposites to deliver a service that is both highly technological and bespoke?
I don’t really see technology and bespoke service as opposites.
A tailor can use a sewing machine instead of stitching every piece by hand. The suit is still bespoke if it was designed, cut and made for that particular person.
I think about legal services in much the same way.
There are many organizational, documentary and repetitive tasks in an international law firm that technology can make faster and more reliable. Every minute we save there is time we can spend on what should never be standardized: understanding the case, talking to the client, identifying the real problem and developing the right strategy.
Our philosophy is simple: standardize the process, not the client.
Technology should make the work more efficient. The legal strategy should remain personal.
Technology is a cornerstone of efficiency for your firm. What has been the most complex technological challenge or the boldest digital investment you’ve chosen to implement, and how has it impacted your international clients?
The biggest challenge was never picking software. It was making sure that a client’s case does not depend on which lawyer happens to open the file that morning.
So we built a system to organize every stage of the work in a disciplined way, while keeping the same level of individual attention as the firm grew.
My view is that knowledge should never remain with one lawyer.
If one member of the team discovers a better argument, solves a new problem or identifies a risk we had not seen before, that knowledge should become part of the firm’s knowledge.
That is where technology has been most valuable for us. We use it to turn individual knowledge into shared knowledge through internal guidelines, controls, analysis tools, review procedures and continuous updates.
For me, that has been one of the most important investments we have made as the firm has grown: making sure that a larger team creates more collective knowledge rather than simply more separate professionals.
For our clients, the result should be consistency. The quality of their case should not depend on which individual lawyer happens to be handling one particular step.
There is a lot of discussion around Artificial Intelligence in the legal field, with some fearing that algorithms will eventually replace lawyers. From your unique vantage point, what is that “human spark” and added value that no technology can ever replicate in face-to-face legal counsel?
I don’t believe AI can replace the lawyer, especially when the job is not simply to apply existing law but to develop a new legal argument.
If a legal argument is truly new, you cannot expect to simply retrieve it as established knowledge.
AI can help me find statutes, cases, precedents and information much faster. That is enormously useful. But it cannot decide for me which pieces actually matter, how they should be connected, or what legal strategy should be built from them.
That remains the lawyer’s job.
AI gives us access to more information, faster. The lawyer still has to select it, challenge it, interpret it and decide how to use it.
If your goal is simply to follow already established law, technology can be an extraordinary accelerator. But if you are trying to build a new legal path, you still have to do what lawyers have always done: study, connect things that others may not yet have connected, and take responsibility for the argument you are making.
While jure sanguinis, or citizenship by descent, is a constitutionally guaranteed right, descendants of Italian emigrants still face massive bureaucratic hurdles. What is currently the most challenging “battle” you face on this front?
Let me begin with one clarification, because it matters.
Italian citizenship is a status the Constitution protects. But the specific rules on how citizenship passes from parent to child are written by Parliament, within limits. Where those limits sit is exactly what the current battle is about.
The most difficult issue today comes from the 2025 citizenship reform. It dramatically changed the rules for citizenship by descent and applied those new restrictions even to people who had already been born.
That retroactive effect is at the center of the legal debate.
And this takes me back to what first attracted me to law in high school: a rule never exists in isolation.
If being a lawyer simply meant reading one statute and applying it literally, lawyers would probably be much less necessary. Today you could ask an AI system, “I am a fourth-generation descendant. What does the new law say?” and it could immediately answer, “The statute excludes you.”
But that is not where legal analysis ends. That is where it begins.
You then have to ask whether that statute is consistent with the rest of the legal system — with the Italian Constitution, with European Union law and with higher-ranking legal principles. A law can be fully in force and still face limits because of rules above it.
That is precisely what has happened with the 2025 reform.
In April 2026, the Constitutional Court issued Decision No. 63. Many people read it as the end of the story. In that same decision, the Court also declined to send the European question to the Court of Justice because it considered the answer clear enough already.
We read it differently, and we kept the European Union law argument at the center of our filings.
A few months later, in Order No. 147 of 2026 — in proceedings our firm was not involved in — the same Court took a different procedural path. It suspended the case and referred a question to the Court of Justice of the European Union: whether Articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU preclude a national rule that bars, from the outset, the acquisition of Italian citizenship by people born abroad before that rule existed, where they hold another citizenship.
On the European question, that is a meaningful shift in the space of a few months.
I want to be precise about what this is and what it is not. It is not a ruling that the reform is invalid. It is not a decision by the Court of Justice, which has not ruled. It does not automatically reopen cases that have already been decided.
What it means is that the question is now before the court that has the final word on EU law — and no one can tell you today how that court will answer.
To me, that is a very concrete example of what makes this profession fascinating: not stopping at the individual rule, but understanding the legal system in which that rule has to operate.
Beyond citizenship by descent, the global mobility landscape has shifted dramatically. Today, there is a lot of focus on investor visas, digital nomad visas, and elective residency visas. Who is the “new migrant” turning to Aprigliano International Law Firm, and what are the Italian bureaucratic pitfalls that risk driving away major investments or foreign talent?
In a globalized world, I don’t think there is one stereotype of the “new migrant.”
People move for work, investment, retirement, or simply because technology allows them to spend part of their lives somewhere else.
In Italy, the biggest challenge is often bureaucracy. Timelines are not always predictable, even when the law provides deadlines, and different offices do not always operate in exactly the same way.
So knowing the statute is not always enough. You also need to know how a particular office interprets it and how that procedure works in practice.
That practical knowledge can make a significant difference in completing a case efficiently and avoiding unnecessary delays.
Entrepreneurs and multinationals looking to invest and operate in Italy often face a labyrinthine regulatory system. What is the greatest fear of those who turn to you, how does your assistance help defuse it, and how do you keep yourself trained to decode these constant global shifts?
For companies, the biggest concern is often uncertainty about timing.
Businesses plan investments, hiring, relocation and market entry around schedules. A delay of several months can have a real impact on a project.
This is where regular experience with these procedures matters. Because we work with them every day, we also follow changes in the practices and procedures of the individual offices involved.
Submitting a complete application from the beginning, based not only on the law but also on what the specific office actually requires, can prevent requests for additional documents and avoid significant delays.
More broadly, helping an international client requires more than knowing the legal rule. You need to understand how that rule works in the real world and what the client is actually trying to accomplish.
Our goal is to make that path as predictable as possible.
As for staying current, most of it comes from the work itself. We deal with these offices every day, and we listen to clients explaining why a particular delay matters to their business. That tells you more about how things are actually moving than any single source of information.
Behind every case file and appeal lie human stories and dreams of returning to one’s roots. Is there a case among the many you’ve handled that remains particularly close to your heart, one where you felt you weren’t just winning a lawsuit, but restoring someone’s identity?
One case I remember very clearly involved an American couple who had retired and decided they wanted to spend the next chapter of their lives in Italy.
Their citizenship case was relatively straightforward. They had tried for a couple of years to obtain a consular appointment without success, so they eventually came to us and we filed a court petition in Italy.
The hearing was scheduled just before Christmas. In a case like theirs, we reasonably expected the court to move toward a decision soon afterward.
Then, only a few days before the hearing, we were informed that it had been postponed for three months because of the court’s internal scheduling needs.
I still remember the video call with the client. He greeted me in this wonderfully old-fashioned Italian — probably something he had learned from his grandfather — and, laughing, said something like, “From today, we’re paesani.”
That was when he told me that he and his wife had already moved to Italy.
I was shocked, because that had not been the original plan. He had always told me they would relocate after the citizenship case was completed and after they had obtained their Italian passports. But during the summer they had spent time in Italy visiting relatives, and at some point they simply decided they did not want to wait any longer. By Christmas, they had bought a home, shipped their furniture and moved.
He was laughing. I was frozen.
Not because I thought their case was weak. Quite the opposite. But I knew something he was not thinking about in that moment: even in a straightforward case, courts can postpone hearings, judges can change, and timelines can shift.
While he was celebrating the move, I was already calculating how long they could legally remain in Italy and what we would need to do if the judgment did not arrive in time.
And that is exactly what happened.
As U.S. citizens, they could not simply remain in Italy indefinitely while waiting for the citizenship judgment. Once the period of lawful short-term stay expired, they needed a valid immigration status to remain in the country. Otherwise, they risked becoming unlawfully present, with potentially serious immigration consequences.
So suddenly we had two matters to manage at the same time: the citizenship case and an immigration solution that would allow them to remain legally in Italy while the court proceedings continued. We had to organize that very quickly, together with residence issues and the other administrative problems connected to their status.
The case was postponed again. What had initially looked like a three-month delay ultimately became about six months, with further uncertainty caused by additional court adjournments and changes in the judge assigned to the case.
We eventually obtained recognition of their Italian citizenship, and today they live in Italy as Italian citizens.
That case stayed with me because it showed me, in a very concrete way, the difference between legal time and real life. A three-month postponement may look like a procedural detail on a court calendar. But for the people involved, it can affect where they are allowed to live, whether they can establish residence, and whether the life they have already begun building can continue as planned.
It also reinforced something I tell clients all the time: even when a case looks strong, you should always think about the practical consequences if the timing changes.
Behind every file there are people making real decisions about their lives. Our job is not only to argue the law, but also to understand what happens to them while the law is taking its course.
Looking back at the early years of your career and comparing them to your Milan firm today, what is the most valuable piece of advice you would give your younger self, and what do you consider to be your greatest intuition?
I would tell my younger self: never fall too much in love with your own argument.
Strong convictions are important in law. But it is just as important to challenge them, look for the arguments against you and ask whether there is a better interpretation.
Over the years, I have developed a habit. When I build a new legal theory, I ask the other lawyers in the firm to try to destroy it.
Criticism forces you to see the issue from angles you may have missed. It exposes weaknesses. And sometimes it tells you whether your argument is genuinely strong or whether you simply became attached to it.
As for my biggest insight, I think it was understanding that a law firm can truly grow only if individual knowledge becomes collective knowledge.
Hiring more lawyers is not enough. You need a system where something learned by one person becomes available to everyone.
In many ways, that reflects how I approach law itself: keep studying, share what you learn, challenge your assumptions and never treat a solution as permanent simply because it worked yesterday.
So, if you had to sum up the philosophy that guides you and your team every day when you open the doors of your Milan office in a single word or motto, what would it be?
Keep learning. Look beyond the obvious. Understand the person before you decide.
I believe those three things belong together.
Keep studying. Look at problems from angles other people may not be considering, and don’t be afraid to think outside the usual framework.
But at the same time, understand the person in front of you.
Clients are not files or numbers. They are people. Each one has a different story and different needs. Very often, the difference is in the details.
You can know a statute perfectly, but if you do not understand what a decision will actually mean for that person’s life, it is difficult to give truly good advice.
And the opposite is also true. Understanding the client is not enough if you stop studying the law, challenging your assumptions and looking for better solutions.
That, in the end, is what I want our firm to do every day.
