They chose Italy. To study, to work, to breathe freely. Many have also chosen to speak out — in Italian piazzas, on social media, at demonstrations — against the regime that forced them to leave. Today, however, they face a Kafkaesque paradox: the very document that legitimises their presence in Italy has become a trap. And Italian bureaucracy risks cornering them into an impossible, potentially dangerous choice.

There are over 24,000 Iranian citizens legally residing in Italy for work or study. Of these, at least 13,000 are university students, making Iranians the largest foreign community in Italian universities in the 2023/2024 academic year. The scale of this presence reflects a phenomenon that has grown with striking speed: in 2020, there were barely 4,000. A quiet exodus, driven by repression, economic sanctions, and a generation that looks to Europe as the model of society it wants to build at home.

The Passport as a Weapon

The problem is both straightforward to explain and devastating in its consequences. Many of these Iranian citizens hold expiring or already expired passports. They have, in theory, two options for renewal: return to Iran — today wholly impractical, given the ongoing war and brutal repression — or approach the Iranian embassies and consulates in Italy. But this second option is far from a neutral bureaucratic transaction.

Those who have publicly exposed themselves — joining demonstrations against the regime, posting solidarity with protesters on social media, signing petitions or participating in acts of dissent — know that walking into a diplomatic office of the Islamic Republic means handing over their name, and above all the names of family members still in Tehran, to the Iranian security apparatus. The regime has long weaponised its diplomatic network as a surveillance instrument against the diaspora, using relatives left behind as leverage to silence dissent from abroad.

Without a valid passport, however, renewing a residence permit in Italy is not possible. Without a residence permit, one becomes undocumented: jobs are lost, studies interrupted, years of integration undone. Since study permits typically last just one year, the number of Iranians already caught in this predicament is likely in the thousands.

The Impossible Alternative

Faced with this dead end, many are informally steered toward international protection — an asylum application. But this path, too, is riddled with dangers. Filing for asylum is, in many cases, tantamount to formally declaring one’s opposition to the regime. And the Islamic Republic does not forgive — neither the applicants themselves, nor the relatives they have left behind.

As early as 2023, the Court of Bologna granted refugee status to an entire Iranian family unit, ruling unequivocally that family members of individuals persecuted for political reasons may themselves be subject to reprisals. This precedent captures with precision the mechanism of terror at work: seeking asylum means exposing those you left at home. The choice is not between safety and risk — it is between two different kinds of risk.

The Voice of the Senate

It fell to Senator Marco Lombardo, of the centrist party Azione, to raise this issue formally in parliament. On 12 March 2026, he tabled a written question to the Minister of the Interior, drawing on a dossier he knows well — Lombardo had previously brought the situation of Iranians in Italy before the Senate Human Rights Commission. His request is not for a statement of principle, but for a concrete change in administrative practice.

At the legal heart of his question lies an explicit citation: the ruling of the Emilia-Romagna Regional Administrative Court (TAR), Section I, 6 June 2008, no. 2343 — a judgment that established a clear principle which police headquarters across Italy continue to systematically ignore. According to that ruling, the Consolidated Immigration Act (Article 4) requires a foreigner to present a valid travel document only at the moment of entry into Italy and upon the first application for a residence permit. No provision of law requires that a passport be renewed during the period of stay as a prerequisite for renewing a residence permit. The TAR held that a passport valid at the time of entry “continues to be valid for identification purposes and for the fulfilment of residency obligations” even after its subsequent expiry.

The case that gave rise to that ruling was emblematic: the Bologna Police Headquarters had refused to issue a long-term EU residence permit to a foreign national who had lived legally in Italy for over five years, had sufficient income, and met every statutory requirement — solely because his passport had expired. The TAR annulled that refusal as legally unfounded. Sixteen years later, the same court reaffirmed the same principle in a 2024 ruling, restating that the failure to produce a valid passport cannot constitute grounds for refusing a residence permit renewal. And yet, Italian police headquarters continue to apply the opposite practice. The gap between what the law permits and what the administration does is the precise problem Senator Lombardo is asking the government to close.

The Solution Already Exists

No new legislation is required. What is needed is that existing law be applied. Lombardo’s request to the Ministry of the Interior is to issue an administrative circular aligning police headquarters’ practices with established case law — at minimum, he argues, “until the end of the conflict in Iran.” The identity of most applicants is not in question; what is in question is the willingness of the state to act on legal precedent already on the books.

This would not be the first time administrative inertia has required external correction. In November 2025, a judge ordered the Italian Foreign Ministry to unblock visa procedures for Iranian students, finding that the existing process unlawfully discriminated against them compared to applicants from other countries. Once again, the judiciary had to step in where the administration had stalled.

A Generation Looking to Europe

Behind every statistic is a person. Among the tens of thousands of Iranians living in Italy are engineers, doctors, researchers, artists, and activists. Young people who, after the murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022, filled the streets of Rome, Milan, Bologna, and Turin chanting Woman, Life, Freedom. Young people who, just weeks ago, celebrated the fall of Khamenei alongside their Italian friends. Young people who look to Europe — its values, its institutions, its conception of individual dignity — as the blueprint for the Iran they hope one day to build.

That is a responsibility. Not merely humanitarian, but political. To abandon these young people to a bureaucratic paradox — while an eighteen-year-old court ruling sits unenforced — would mean betraying not only them, but the very idea of Europe they have risked so much to reach. The law exists. The jurisprudence is clear. What remains is a straightforward political choice.