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The fate of millions of immigrants is at stake as Italians vote in a two-day referendum that proposes to speed up the process of acquiring citizenship for foreigners who legally entered the country.

The referendum also seeks to roll back labour reforms to provide enhanced job protections.

Polling stations opened on Sunday at 7am local time (05:00 GMT), with results expected after polls close on Monday at 3pm (13:00 GMT).

The measures – backed by opposition parties, labour unions and social activists – are aimed at revising citizenship laws to help second-generation Italians born in the country, to non-European Union parents, integrate more easily.

However, the vote may fail to generate sufficient turnout to be deemed valid – a turnout of more than 50 percent is required for a referendum to be legally binding.

Ahead of this weekend’s vote, the citizenship issue has garnered plenty of attention in a nation where concerns over the scale of immigration helped propel right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s anti-migration coalition to power in late 2022. Immigration has emerged as a key issue, particularly in Western Europe as well as the United States under President Donald Trump.

So, what does the referendum propose, and what does it mean for immigrants whose lives are in limbo due to the slow process of naturalisation in the EU member nation?

What are the Italian citizenship requirements, and how many immigrants are waiting for citizenship?

The question on the ballot paper asks Italians if they back reducing the period of residence required to apply for Italian citizenship, by naturalisation, from 10 years to five.

The change proposed by the referendum would allow nearly 1.5 million foreigners to obtain citizenship immediately, according to an estimate by Idos, an Italian research centre. That would include nearly 300,000 minors, who would obtain citizenship if their parents did.

About half of Italy’s 5.4 million foreign residents could be eligible to apply for citizenship if the vote is passed.

The vote comes as Meloni has tightened citizenship laws, making it hard for resident immigrants to obtain nationality.

Currently, immigrants from countries outside the EU can apply for citizenship only after 10 years of uninterrupted residency in Italy.

What is more, the children of lawful immigrants can apply for passports only once they have turned 18 and if they have continuously lived in the country since birth.

On the other hand, generous bloodline laws allowed people of Italian descent, even if remote, to obtain citizenship, helping maintain a link with the diaspora.

Between 2016 and 2023, for instance, Italy granted citizenship to more than 98,300 people, mostly living in Latin America, based on their claims of Italian ancestry.

With Italy’s birthrate in sharp decline, economists say the country needs to attract more foreigners to boost its anaemic economy.

Francesco Galietti, from political risk firm Policy Sonar, told the Reuters news agency that keeping such rules tight was “an identity issue” for Meloni, but she was also being pushed by businesses to open up the borders of an ageing country to foreign workers.

“On the one hand, there is the cultural identity rhetoric, but on the other, there are potential problems paying pensions and an economy that relies on manufacturing, which needs workers,” Galietti said.

For context, Italy’s constitution allows citizens to repeal laws through referendums, part of the system of checks and balances devised after Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule in the 1940s.

What are the other proposals in the referendum?

The referendum seeks to make it harder to fire workers and increase compensation for those laid off by small businesses, reversing a previous law passed by a centre-left government a decade ago.

One of the questions on the ballot also addresses the urgent issue of security at work, restoring joint liability to both contractors and subcontractors for workplace injuries.

Campaigners gathered more than 4.5 million signatures, according to the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) union, far more than needed to trigger the referendum, which will comprise five questions – four on the labour market and one on citizenship.

“We want to reverse a culture that has prioritised the interests of business over those of workers,” CGIL general secretary Maurizio Landini told the AFP news agency.

Who backed the referendum and why?

The referendum was promoted by a coalition of relatively small political parties – More Europe, Possibile, the Italian Socialist Party, the Italian Radicals and the Communist Refoundation Party – and numerous civil society associations.

It is also being backed by the centre-left Democratic Party, which is jockeying for Italian citizenship laws to be more aligned with EU-wide standards.

Research shows that access to citizenship has positive causal effects.

Immigrants who naturalise experience lower unemployment rates, earn higher incomes and are less likely to be overqualified for their jobs.

By contrast, protracted waiting periods for naturalisation delay or dampen these effects.

These findings support the claim that naturalisation is not only a reward, but also an important catalyst for integration.

The majority of Italians think that citizenship accelerates the integration process as well.

The last Eurobarometer on the integration of immigrants reports that 87 percent of Italians believe that acquiring citizenship is an important factor for the successful integration of immigrants in Italy.

Even if it passes, however, the reform will not affect the law many consider deeply unfair – that children born in Italy to foreign parents cannot request nationality until they reach 18.

Does PM Meloni back the new citizenship rules?

Opposition left-wing and centrist parties, civil society groups and a leading trade union have latched on to the issues of labour rights and Italy’s demographic woes as a way of challenging Meloni’s right-wing coalition government.

Meloni has said she would show up at the polls but not cast a ballot – a move widely criticised by the left as antidemocratic, since it will not help reach the necessary threshold to make the vote valid.

Activists and opposition parties have denounced the lack of public debate on the measures, accusing the governing centre-right coalition of trying to dampen interest in sensitive issues that directly affect immigrants and workers.

A Demopolis institute poll last month estimated turnout would be in the range of 31-39 percent among Italy’s roughly 50 million electors, well short of the required threshold.

Leaders of two of the governing coalition’s right-wing parties, Antonio Tajani of Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini of the League, have opposed the vote.

The referendum is “dangerous” and would extend access to citizenship “indiscriminately”, Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, said in May.

How significant is the referendum?

Supporters say this reform would bring Italy’s citizenship law in line with many other European countries, promoting greater social integration for long-term residents.

It would also allow faster access to civil and political rights, such as the right to vote, eligibility for public employment and freedom of movement within the EU.

Italy is also confronting one of Europe’s most acute demographic crises.

Its population is ageing rapidly, with about a quarter of Italians aged above 65 years and just 12 percent aged 14 or younger. The referendum could ease some of these pressures.

LAFC has won an MLS Cup and played in two CONCACAF Champions League finals.

None of those games were worth as much as the team’s upcoming match.

Literally.

Next up for LAFC is the $10-Million Game, in which it will play Mexico’s Club América on Saturday at Banc of California to determine the final entrant in the Club World Cup. The 32-team tournament, which will be staged across the United States from mid-June to mid-July, has a record-breaking billion-dollar prize pool.

By simply qualifying for the event and playing in three group-stage matches, LAFC would be entitled to a participation fee of $9.55 million.

That might not be considered a significant prize for the Dodgers or Lakers, but it’s a major bounty for LAFC, which had a payroll of about $20 million last season.

“We know what’s at stake,” LAFC co-president John Thorrington said.

Imagine that, a Major League Soccer team playing a game with real consequences. The stakes are unusually high for a team in a league in which 18 of 30 teams reach the postseason and the threat of relegation is non-existent.

Real money will be on the line.

That’s money that could go toward covering the transfer fee or salary of the team’s next signature player, as one of LAFC’s three designated-player slots could open this summer.

Thorrington preferred to emphasize the symbolic importance of LAFC reaching the Club World Cup, how it would move the team one step closer to its long-stated ambition of becoming a global brand.

“The conversation here is not dominated by the financial benefit here, but rather the competitive opportunity that this game and the tournament present,” Thorrington said.

If LAFC advances to the Club World Cup, its opening game will be against Chelsea of the English Premier League. The other group-stage games would be against ES Tunis of Tunisia and Flamengo of Brazil.

“I think it would be something special,” defender Eddie Segura said in Spanish.

The tournament could also be a wake-up call for MLS, which has two other teams in the competition in Inter Miami and the Seattle Sounders. The league has a salary cap, as well as paint-by-numbers roster compliance rules that permit minimal flexibility on how its teams can spend money. Soccer is a sport in which teams are only as good as their weakest links, but the regulations force clubs to construct top-heavy rosters.

As it was, the financial restrictions were already handicapping MLS teams in its competitions against its Mexican counterparts, with LAFC relying on its smarts instead of the economic might of its deep-pocketed owners to reach two Champions League finals. Now, MLS teams will be taking on opponents with virtually unlimited budgets. Just two years ago, Chelsea spent more than a billion dollars buying players in a single transfer window.

The Club World Cup’s cash prizes offer MLS a powerful incentive to loosen its rules. Group-stage wins are worth $2 million each. Teams will be paid $7.5 million for reaching the round of 16. The champion will take home more than $100 million.

The payouts could also force MLS to make changes to its collective bargaining agreement, which was signed when the Club World Cup was still a seven-team tournament. Under the current CBA, LAFC’s players would divide $1 million, with the remainder of the $9.55 million participation fee staying with the club.

Segura said the players are engaged in talks over their compensation.

“The club would benefit a lot, but I hope that we as players, as the ones who are there giving everything, will also have a chance to benefit,” Segura said.

The upcoming game has also offered LAFC a firsthand view of FIFA’s operations.

LAFC’s and Club América’s opportunity came at the expense of León, which was removed from the Club World Cup field because it was owned by the same group that owned another Mexican team in the tournament, Pachuca.

León qualified for the tournament by defeating LAFC in the 2023 CONCACAF Champions League final. Rather than award León’s place to LAFC, FIFA basically invented a play-in game out of thin air, calling on LAFC to take on Club América, which was the region’s highest-ranked team that wasn’t already in the tournament.

LAFC was at least granted a chance. The Galaxy won the MLS Cup last season, but Inter Miami received the place reserved for the host nation before the MLS playoffs even started. The purported reason was that Inter Miami had the league’s best regular-season record. However, the widespread suspicion was that FIFA wanted Lionel Messi in the tournament.

After all, money is what is driving this tournament and money is what is driving the sport.

Nick Garcia, the throws coach at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, calls shotputter and discus thrower Aja Johnson “the dragon slayer.”

She’s only 5 feet 3 but slays taller girls competing in those events.

Last weekend, she won the Southern Section Division 3 shotput and discus titles. This weekend she will try to qualify for the state championships when competing at the Masters Meet at Moorpark High. She won the state discus title last year. She was state champion in the shotput in 2023.

Aja Johnson of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Under Garcia’s guidance, Johnson uses technique, athleticism, agility and explosiveness to excel in the two events. She has committed to Louisville. Notre Dame athletes have won every Division 3 shotput or discus title since 2021. …

The City Section Division I baseball semifinals will be held Wednesday at Stengel Field in Glendale with a trip to Dodger Stadium on Saturday at stake. Carson will play Taft at 3 p.m., followed by Banning taking on Verdugo Hills at 6 p.m.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

The Chargers welcomed Arctos as a limited partner Tuesday as NFL owners approved a sale that transferred some the team’s shares to the Dallas-based private equity firm that already has ties to the Dodgers.

“Arctos’ track record in major professional sports speaks for itself,” Chargers owner Dean Spanos said in a statement, “and we are grateful for their alignment moving forward during this time of tremendous growth for our organization.”

According to a league memo The Times obtained last week, Arctos acquired 8% of the team’s shares. Spanos and his family will retain control of the Chargers organization with approximately 61% of the franchise.

Arctos now has stakes in two NFL teams less than a year after the league approved private equity ownership. The company acquired a 10% stake in the Buffalo Bills in January, adding to its portfolio that already included MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS teams. Arctos has ownership stakes in six MLB teams: the Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres, Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox.

“We’re honored to join the Los Angeles Chargers ownership group and are grateful to Dean and the rest of the management team for their partnership,” Arctos cofounder and co-managing partner Doc O’Connor said in a statement. “We’re excited to get to work and help the team achieve their vision however we can.”

Approaching a decade since their move to L.A., the Chargers have added two major ownership groups in the last year. Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores bought a 27% stake in the team in September, resolving a long-running dispute between Dea Spanos Berberian and her siblings as Gores and his wife bought Spanos Berberian’s share of the franchise.

The Chargers will seek approval to sell an 8% stake in the franchise to private investment firm Arctos at next week’s NFL team owners meetings.

The approval request was sent in a memo to NFL team owners, according to a person with knowledge of the memo not authorized to speak publicly about it.

If approved, Chargers owner Dean Spanos and siblings Michael Spanos and Alexis Spanos Ruhl would still own approximately 61% of the franchise.

The NFL spring meeting will be held Tuesday and Wednesday in Eagan, Minn.

It is the second major change for the Chargers ownership group in the last year after Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores bought a 27% stake in the team in September. That transaction resolved a long-running dispute between Dea Spanos Berberian and her siblings as Gores and his wife bought Spanos Berberian’s share of the franchise.

Players recently ranked Spanos and the ownership’s contribution to the Chargers’ success fifth-best out of 32 teams, according to an annual survey conducted by the NFL Players Assn. It was a stark improvement from the previous year’s rankings that placed ownership 24th in the league.

The jump can be attributed to the team’s new $250-million facility in El Segundo, which opened last July. Spanos also brought in coach Jim Harbaugh, who led the team to an 11-6 regular-season record in his first season.

The team entered free agency with the second-highest salary-cap space in the NFL, according to Overthecap.com, but did not make many splashy signings. The biggest contract of the offseason went to free agent offensive lineman Mekhi Becton, who signed a two-year deal worth $20 million after winning the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles.

It was one of US President Donald Trump’s most ambitious executive orders, and it came just hours after he took office for his second term: ending the United States’ decades-long policy of birthright citizenship.

And just three days after Trump issued the order, a federal judge in Washington state blocked the decree from going into effect. In the months that followed, two other federal judges joined in issuing nationwide injunctions.

On Thursday, the issue will reach the US Supreme Court, with the 6-3 conservative dominated bench set to hear oral arguments in the case. What the court decides could be transformative.

Proponents have long argued that the practice of granting citizenship to all those born on US soil is woven into the national fabric.

American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero did not mince words in January, when he called Trump’s order a “reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values”, destined to create a “permanent subclass of people born in the US who are denied full rights as Americans”.

Meanwhile, a smaller but vocal contingency, empowered by Trump, has maintained that the practice is based on faulty constitutional interpretation and serves as an incentive for undocumented migration. The Trump administration has called it “birth tourism”.

Here’s what to expect from Thursday’s hearing:

What time will it start?

The hearing will start at 9am local (14:00 GMT).

What is at stake?

The most fundamental question that could be answered by the top court is whether birthright citizenship will be allowed to continue.

Proponents point to the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, which reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”.

A subsequent 1898 Supreme Court case, United States v Wong Kim Ark, interpreted the language as applying to all immigrants, creating a precedent that has since stood.

Some studies estimate that about 150,000 immigrant infants are born with citizenship every year under the policy.

The Trump administration, in contrast, has embraced the theory that babies born to noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US, and therefore are not constitutionally guaranteed citizenship.
Speaking to reporters in April, Trump described a scenario of “tourists coming in and touching a piece of sand and then all of a sudden, there’s citizenship”. He has embraced the theory that the 14th Amendment was meant to apply only to former slaves, and not newly arriving immigrants

At the time, Trump predicted it would be “easy” to win the case based on that logic.

Could the outcome be more complicated?

Yes. The Trump administration has taken a strategically unique tack in the case.

In their emergency filing to the Supreme Court, they have focused on the actions of the three judges who blocked Trump’s order from going into effect nationwide.

They argue the orders extend beyond the judges’ authorities and should only apply to the plaintiffs or jurisdictions directly connected to Trump’s executive order.

Theoretically, the Supreme Court could rule on whether the judges can issue nationwide injunctions, without ruling on whether birthright citizenship is, in fact, protected by the Constitution.

For example, if the justices rule that the lower judges exceeded their power, but do not make a determination on the constitutional merits of birthright citizenship, the executive order would only be blocked in the 22 states that successfully challenged Trump’s order.

Attorneys General in those states had challenged the order in a joint lawsuit, with a federal judge in Massachusetts ruling in their favour in February.

Birthright citizenship would effectively be banned in 28 other states unless they also successfully challenge the order or until the Supreme Court makes a future ruling.

The possibility has split legal scholars, with some arguing it is unlikely the Supreme Court would make the narrower decision on the scope of the lower judges’ power without also ruling on the underlying constitutional merits of birthright citizenship.

Could the ruling extend beyond birthright citizenship?

Yes. If the justices do decide to only address the scope of the lower judges’ power, the implications could extend far beyond the birthright citizenship question.

It would also apply to several other Trump executive orders that have been blocked by a federal judge’s national injunction, also called “universal injunctions”. Those include several Trump executive orders seeking to unilaterally transform the federal government, the military, and how funding is disbursed to states, to name a few.

In a written filing in the birthright citizenship case, the Department of Justice pointed to the wider implications, saying the need for the Supreme Court’s “intervention has become urgent as universal injunctions have reached tsunami levels”.

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in the Maryland case that successfully challenged Trump’s birthright order said doing away with national injunctions would create different tiers of rights depending on an individual’s geographical location.

“An infant would be a United States citizen and full member of society if born in New Jersey, but a deportable noncitizen if born in Tennessee,” they wrote in a court filing.

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has bought a stake in Women’s Super League champions Chelsea.

Ohanian, who is the husband of American tennis star Serena Williams, will have a seat on the club’s board after purchasing a 8-10% share, believed to be worth around £20m.

In a post to X, external, Ohanian said: “I’ve bet big on women’s sports before, and I’m doing it again.

“I’m proud to announce that I’m joining Chelsea as an investor and board member. I’m honored for the chance to help this iconic club become every American’s favorite WSL team and much, much more.”

He also posted images of Chelsea kits with the names of his children, Olympia and Adira, on the backs.

The 42-year-old has invested in women’s football previously, as the largest shareholder in American club side Angel City FC until it was sold in 2024 for £192.3 million – the highest price for a women’s sports team until this deal.