In this picture taken Tuesday, Set. 19, 2017, demonstrators hold a banner, left, and a replica of the Italian Passport reading: reading: Italians without citizenship, who is born or grows in Italy is Italian, during a protest demanding the approval of the citizenship law for children outside the Italian Parliament in Rome. The politically fraught debate in Italy over whether to accelerate citizenship for children of immigrants took on last-ditch urgency Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, as politicians joined a symbolic hunger strike launched by teachers demanding equal rights for their students. (Massimo Percossi/ANSA via AP)

ROME - The politically fraught debate in Italy over whether to accelerate citizenship for children of immigrants took on last-ditch urgency Thursday as politicians joined a symbolic hunger strike launched by teachers demanding equal rights for their students.

Infrastructure Minister Graziano Delrio and several deputy ministers and lawmakers joined the one-day fast to demand parliament take up the legislation, which stalled after the ruling Democrats determined their allies wouldn't back it.

Hundreds of teachers first staged the fast on Tuesday — the anniversary of a deadly 2013 migrant shipwreck off Lampedusa that marked a turning point in Europe's migration saga.

The teachers have also launched an online petition demanding parliament take action. The petition denounces the "paradox of having to educate students in citizenship and constitution ... knowing full well that many will never have either citizenship or the right to vote."

Currently, foreigners born in Italy can seek citizenship only when they turn 18 and if they have lived in the country since birth. Children born to foreigners lose out on a host of benefits in those intervening years — including things as basic as reduced admission rates to Italian museums to learn about the only culture they know.

Proposed legislation before the Senate would allow children born in Italy to immigrants holding long-term residence permits to seek citizenship when they are as young as age 12, if they have completed five years of schooling here. Foreign children not born in Italy could also apply, as long as they have completed five years of schooling before becoming adults.

Some 800,000 children could become Italian citizens if the proposal becomes law.

The Democratic Party of Premier Paolo Gentiloni had pushed for passage for years, but backed off last month after acknowledging it didn't have the votes in the Senate. Gentiloni insisted he was still committed to passing it before the end of the year, and Delrio joined the hunger strike to press for the Senate to take it up in the waning weeks of the legislative session.

Supporters have said the issue is a matter of justice for the children and a way to integrate Italy's growing migrant community into Italian society. With elections expected by spring, opponents on the right say now is not the time to change the law when Italy is struggling to accommodate waves of newcomers.

Pope Francis hasn't explicitly endorsed the new law, but he has suggested he favours it. In a message for refugees in August, he said all children have a right to citizenship at birth, though he didn't specify if citizenship must be from the country where the children were born.

Many children born to asylum-seekers in Italy end up effectively stateless if their parents' home countries can't or won't provide them with documentation.

Francis has thrown his support behind related proposed legislation aimed at better integrating migrants into Italian society and regularizing those who are here illegally.

News from © The Associated Press, 2017