The right to family unity and foreign children

What interests must be evaluated to protect family life?

The historical issue that gave rise to the Supreme Court's ruling examined in this work is simple: a non-EU citizen who had entered Italy without a regular residence permit and had been subject to a deportation order following a number of criminal convictions, asked the competent Juvenile Court to be authorized to remain in the territory of the State pursuant to Article 31, paragraph 3, Consolidated Act on Immigration.

The reasons put forward by the citizen struck a target and lead inevitably to the cassation of the disputed order both on the basis of the guidelines previously manifested by the Court of Cassation itself and on the basis of international law norms. In fact, with regard to paragraph 3 of Article 31 of Legislative Decree No 286 of 25 July 1998, Consolidated Act of provisions concerning the discipline of immigration and rules on the condition of foreigners, case-law has undergone a slow but clear evolution that has increasingly highlighted that the superior interest of the minor in a family unity finds its normative basis in the Constitution (see Articles 29 and 30 ) but also in the 1989 New York Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Attached is an in-depth case law on the subject of the right to family unity and foreign children.