Italians abroad: how many are there? Doing the math is very difficult. According to official estimates, there are about five million Italian citizens living outside Italy. And they recognize each other immediately. But the natives would be about 80 million.
But more than quantity, the quality of Italians abroad is interesting. If it is true that the first emigrants departed from a situation of poverty, one cannot fail to notice that when an Italian goes abroad often ends up making a fortune. It doesn't matter if this happens in restaurants, in the administration of the state or in the entertainment world. It just happens. And so Italians, Italian-Americans, Italian-Argentines, Italian-Brazilians end up having incredible successes.
Italians in the show
If we think of the most obvious and well-known cases, it is enough to raise our eyes to the Olympus of American celebrities. Which in reality in many cases are Italian-Americans. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Leonardo di Caprio, John Travolta, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Sylvester Stallone, Steve Buscemi, Quentin Tarantino… How long can we go on?
If we move to music we meet Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennet, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande… But also Astor Piazzolla. And Toquinho.
Italians abroad… in politics
If we move to politics we find a lot of surprises. Who knows that eight presidents of Argentina are of Italian origin? Santiago Derqui, Bartolomé Miter, Arturo Frondizi, José María Guido, Arturo Umberto Illia, Raúl Alberto Lastiri, Héctor José Cámpora, Mauricio Macri, as well as (according to some theories) Juan Domingo Perón. To which we must also add the military Eduardo Lonardi, Juan Carlos Onganía, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Leopoldo Galtieri and Reynaldo Bignone.
Brazil, on the other hand, has already had four Presidents of the Republic of Italian origin: Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli, Emílio Garrastazu Médici, Itamar Franco and Jair Bolsonaro
Among the many others we can remember the mayors of New York Fiorello La Guardia and Rudolph Giuliani, Nancy Pelosi, the former president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli.
Italians in sport
And do we want to remember Ayrton Senna? José Altafini, Felipe Massa, Emerson Palmieri dos Santos, Omar Sivori, Javier Zanetti, Lionel Messi ...
One would think that Italians are a seed that germinates very well when planted far from the boot.
In short, Italians abroad are definitely able to give their best. Italians abroad are the best.
