> I badly want to learn the historical reason for this insistence that non-Italian-speaking foreigners must understand the contract they're entering into. They wouldn't put up these hoops to jump through unless someone's gotten badly burned in the past, right?
Turn the situation around. Rich Italian imports wife from poor country, … easy to imagine how that can lead to all sorts of bad situations. It’s one of the ways human trafficking for prostitution happens.
I don't know if that makes a significant difference for that purpose.
It's not like places where weddings take place are conspicuous enough that you couldn't tell the difference between them and a normal govt agency, and it's not like people don't know it is a very bad idea to sign documents where they do not even understand a single word.
The paper trail of a vanilla (let alone international) marriage is already big enough that I doubt criminals would want that, unless they have corrupt officials assisting them, which is a problem these measures do not address.
> it's not like people don't know it is a very bad idea to sign documents where they do not even understand a single word
The laws are there for people who may feel like they don’t have much choice in the matter. And yes lying to officials that you did in fact have a choice and are totally doing this of your own free will and yes of course you understand the document you’re signing is a big part of it.
This is similar to how some pregnancy related health clinics have things like “Sign the sample cup with blue pen if all good, use the red pen if you’re being forced to be here”
> This is similar to how some pregnancy related health clinics have things like “Sign the sample cup with blue pen if all good, use the red pen if you’re being forced to be here”
Turn the situation around. Rich Italian imports wife from poor country, … easy to imagine how that can lead to all sorts of bad situations. It’s one of the ways human trafficking for prostitution happens.