More than a third of Argentinians, are looking for "greener pastures".
10 million of 37million Argentinians are of Italian Ancestry. 
17,000 of them have filed for Italian Citizenship in a potential 2 year long 
wait. 

See Hyperlink for "Fact Book on Argentina" at very bottom
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Column One
LOOKING BACK FOR A FUTURE

Seeing their nation as doomed, Argentines of European descent hope to find 
their fortunes in the land of their ancestors. But obtaining citizenship is a 
long, tough process.

By Hector Tobar
Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
February 11 2002

JOSE LEON SUAREZ, Argentina -- Half a century ago, the Caronna family bade 
farewell to Italy. Estela Caronna and her three children packed into a bus in 
Acerenza, a hillside town in Potenza province, and traveled by boat to a 
South American country whose very name was to them synonymous with affluence. 
None of them ever returned.

Today, in an Argentina that every day becomes poorer and more violent, 
Caronna's granddaughter dreams of that village she's never seen. She imagines 
a country of opportunity on the other side of the Atlantic, a place called 
Italy.

"I need to get a new start on my life," said Analia Caronna, 19. "Far away 
from here." In Italy, she hopes to find "romantic cities and people" and a 
"magical" country that offers plenty of jobs. As Argentina's once-bountiful 
economy crashes around them, an untold number of its people are seeking to 
flee. Thousands have applied in recent weeks to claim the European 
citizenship of their parents and grandparents.

In Buenos Aires, the capital, long lines form most mornings at the consulates 
of Italy, Spain, Poland and other countries that, for much of the 20th 
century, sent hundreds of thousands of citizens to Argentina. Many Argentine 
Jews, the descendants of European immigrants, are seeking Israeli citizenship 
under that country's "law of return."

For the approximately 10 million Argentines of Italian descent, the long 
lines that begin forming before dawn outside the Italian Consulate represent 
the closing of a historical circle.

A century of Italian immigration left its mark on this country in a national 
penchant for excitability, a tendency to speak with the hands, and 
architectural masterpieces such as the Teatro Colon opera house. Italian 
Argentines created the Buenos Aires street slang known as lunfardo.

"The Italians who came here found a type of promised land," said Felix Luna, 
a leading Argentine historian. "People are leaving now because they've 
stopped believing in the country."

One in five workers is unemployed, and many banks are on the verge of 
collapse, the fruit of a four-year recession, rampant government corruption 
and a horribly mismanaged economy.

The crisis is taking on a new dimension today as the government allows the 
national currency to float on the open market. Fear that the value of the 
peso will fall precipitously has led to a week of hoarding and of shortages 
at Argentine markets.

It is perhaps understandable, then, that many Argentines--more than a third, 
according to a recent poll--long for greener pastures elsewhere.

At the Polish Consulate, long lines began forming in January at about the 
same time Argentina devalued its currency and imposed new restrictions on 
bank withdrawals.

Those willing to risk deportation from the United States travel to Miami and 
other cities on tourist visas and stay to find work. Others apply for 
citizenship at the Spanish Consulate, where lines are the longest--most 
people here can claim some ancestor from Spain. Even neighboring Uruguay has 
reported an increase in the number of Argentines seeking permanent residency.

At the Italian Consulate, the waiting list for citizenship is 17,000 names 
long. Some claim citizenship rights based on relatives who came to Argentina 
as long ago as the 19th century. Those who apply today might have to wait two 
years to become citizens.

"We're working under a lot of pressure here," said Vicenzo Palladino, the 
consul general of Italy in Buenos Aires. "We're going to have to hire five 
new people to handle the load."

In the face of televised images of the crowds outside the consulate in Buenos 
Aires, an Italian senator and a government minister have called for measures 
to speed up the return of Italian Argentines to Europe.

Although unemployment in Italy, at 8%, is high by European standards, it is 
still less than half the official 22% rate in Argentina. More important, an 
Italian passport grants its holder the right to seek work throughout the 
European Union.

For the Caronna family, the likely return of granddaughter Analia to Italy 
represents the latest chapter in a saga that began in the aftermath of World 
War II, when the family patriarch, a bricklayer named Antonio, first planned 
a new life in Argentina.

Antonio traveled to South America in 1947, then sent for Estela and their 
children two years later. Their youngest son--Analia's father--was born in 
Argentina.

Much of the family settled in Jose Leon Suarez, a Buenos Aires suburb that is 
home to a sizable Italian Argentine community. A banner hanging over a 
thoroughfare here proclaims "Italian Citizenship!" and offers help with the 
complex application process.

"There is nothing here, nothing, nothing," said Rafaela Caronna, Analia's 
aunt and Antonio's daughter. Her last memory of the town in southern Italy 
she left at age 9 is of a neighbor weeping as the bus pulled away.

Today, Rafaela's son is contemplating a new start in Europe.

"He's a smart young man," she said. "He went to college, and still he hasn't 
been able to find work."

Analia has just begun her veterinary studies at the University of Buenos 
Aires. Since she got the idea that Italy holds the best promise for her 
future, she has pursued Italian citizenship with a quiet determination and 
may leave before graduation.

"My father didn't want to let me go at first," Analia said. "He said he 
didn't want the family to be divided. He was very stubborn about it."

Analia needed her father's help: Argentine-born offspring of Italian 
immigrants can apply for citizenship in their parents' homeland and become 
dual citizens. Once accepted, they can seek to naturalize their own children. 
Those born in Italy have automatic citizenship.

Her father eventually warmed to the idea of her emigrating. He and Analia 
spent hours sifting through old boxes filled with dusty family pictures and 
heirlooms. They found a collection of pipes belonging to her late grandfather 
and her grandmother Estela's Italian birth certificate, a slip of paper now 
worth Analia's escape from Argentina.

On a sweltering January morning, with that document in hand, Analia went to 
the Italian Consulate to join the block-long line to get applications for 
herself and her father. She stood with many others who were hoping to reclaim 
a distant tie to a land their families left in the 1940s and '50s.

"We're going to leave and see how things go for us over there," Gabriela 
Musolino, an unemployed mother, said as her young child played on the 
sidewalk. Musolino's father left the Calabria region of southern Italy during 
World War II, in a boat that arrived in Buenos Aires via Africa.

"I have to find a place to raise my son," Musolino said. She was considering 
traveling to the U.S., but her only relative there would not sponsor her. 
Italy was an easier choice.

When the consular officials gave Musolino forms to fill out, she stared at 
them perplexedly. They were all in Italian, which might as well be Greek to 
her.

Nearby, Lucia Ordonez sought an application for her two adult children. 
Ordonez was born in Italy but left at age 3. Ask her why she would help her 
children move to a country that is only a distant memory to her, and she will 
tell you the sad story of the family business.

"What it took us a lifetime to build fell apart in just a year," said 
Ordonez, 55.

The company, which provided maintenance for office equipment and air 
conditioners, once had 14 employees. All have been laid off. The leftover 
tools and air conditioners from the failed business fill a room in the 
Ordonez home.

"It's very sad for a mother to tell their children they have to leave," she 
said. "I would like for them to have another chance in life."

Italy has become an obsession for Ordonez. Recently she rushed to the 
consulate after hearing that the Italian government would pay the plane fare 
home for wayward citizens, even those who left decades ago. The rumor was 
false.

The decision to emigrate is not an easy one for Argentines, who preserve a 
strong sense of family unity. Many know that if they leave their country for 
a land across the sea, they might be gone forever.

"Our grandparents lived it, they tell how it was," said Ordonez's 24-year-old 
daughter, Andrea. "They never returned [to Italy]. They stayed here, they had 
children."

Andrea is not certain she will leave for Europe once she gets her Italian 
passport. She recently spent two months in Miami working odd jobs, then 
returned to Buenos Aires, feeling a bit homesick.

Like most members of her generation, she has been assimilated into Argentine 
society. Family snapshots show her being honored in her high schools as an 
abanderada, carrying the blue-and-white Argentine flag as the best student in 
her class.

"I love my country, and I would like to stay and fight for it," she said.

A year ago, one of Andrea's friends moved to Milan, Italy, and quickly found 
work and friends in a growing Argentine community.

Gabriel Provenzano, 27, moved to Florence a few years ago and spends much 
time answering e-mail messages from people back home who wonder what life is 
like in Italy.

"How it goes for you [in Italy] depends on how close you are to your people, 
your culture," Provenzano wrote on the Argentine Emigrant Network, a Web 
site. "I know a lot of Argentines here. Some are very, very happy. But there 
are others who think about going back, in spite of the crisis."

But against the love of family and country, there is a palpable sense that 
Argentina is doomed. Andrea, an architecture student at the University of 
Buenos Aires, recently worked a year for a magazine that went bankrupt. The 
company owes her three months' back pay.

"Here you study to become an architect so that you can get a job at a gas 
station or driving a taxi," she said. "To me, that's denigrating. . . . All 
the people who have something important to give to the country, the 
intellectual class, are leaving."

Today's grim reality stands in sharp contrast to the country that drew 
millions of Italians to its shores in waves between 1900 and 1950.

Rafaela Caronna remembers being mesmerized by Buenos Aires five decades ago. 
Her mother and father took her to see the holiday parades that featured the 
motorcade of President Juan Peron and his glamorous wife, Eva.

Rafaela's father, who had a third-grade education, made a small fortune in 
the construction business. He died of a heart attack at the age of 60.

"We were lucky enough to live during those good years," Rafaela said. "There 
were jobs for everyone. You never were in need of anything, and you lived 
with a sense of security. Everyone bought their own house."

The Argentina of today is another world. Her husband's construction business 
hasn't had any work in a year.

"Everything has gone bad here," Rafaela said. "I don't know what Analia is 
going to do." She pauses to consider the position of the family's youngest 
generation, and added, "If I could go, I would."