Kosovo granted citizenship to former U.S. Congressman Joe DioGuardi and his wife, longtime Albanian-American advocate Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, for lobbying in Washington for the rights of Kosovo Albanians and the country’s independence. Acting President Albulena Haxhiu handed the couple their citizenship decrees on Monday at the Presidency Office in Prishtina.

“You have been friends of Kosovo long before it became a state. From today, you are also its citizens! For me, it is an honour to congratulate you on receiving citizenship of the Republic of Kosovo and to say to you: welcome among its citizens. Welcome to your second state, the Republic of Kosovo”, Haxhiu said.

DioGuardi, upon receiving the citizenship, in a press conference alongside his wife and acting president, Albulena Haxhiu noted that Kosovo becoming a country was not easy and not to be taken for granted.

“It was complicated to get a new state of Kosova, now we’re trying to get a new nation. We don’t need just a state, we need a nation, and that nation is now being attacked by the enemies of the Albanian people,” DioGuardi said.

Joe DioGuardi, a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, became one of the earliest American politicians to raise the issue of Albanian rights in Kosovo in Washington.

In 1986, DioGuardi sponsored a congressional resolution addressing the rights of Albanians in the Balkans.  He was also responsible for the first Congressional hearing on Kosova in 1987. 

In June 1988, DioGuardi led a massive demonstration by Albanians from around the United States of America in front of the United Nations in New York City and in front of the White House and the Capitol in Washington, to raise awareness among the U.S. press of the conditions of Albanians in Yugoslavia, especially in Kosovo.

After leaving Congress in 1989, he founded the Albanian American Civic League, AACL, of which he is the volunteer president. 

DioGuardi made his first visit to Kosovo in 1989, where he said he witnessed firsthand the conditions under Serbian rule. The following year, in 1990, he travelled to Kosovo with Congressman Tom Lantos, seeking to draw attention in Washington to the policies of Slobodan Milosevic’s government.

DioGuardi, now 85, testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1991 at a hearing about the status of Kosova, and again in May 1998, chaired by then Senator Joseph Biden.

DioGuardi criticised US foreign policy in the Balkans and clashed with Biden over the need for military intervention through NATO, which Biden subsequently supported.

With the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in March 1999, DioGuardi and Cloyes represented the Albanian perspective on the Balkan conflict, separately and together, in more than 50 TV and radio broadcasts. 

In the summer of 1999, they travelled to Kosovo after the NATO bombing campaign ended to assess conditions and report back to Chairman Ben Gilman.

Since then, DioGuardi and Cloyes have completed more than 40 fact-finding missions to Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia , Montenegro, and Albanian majority south of Serbia- Presheva Valley, in order to report back to Congress about the social, economic, and political conditions in the region. 

In 2003, the AACL was responsible for the introduction of a Congressional Resolution and a hearing calling on the U.S. government to recognise Kosovo’s independence, with the support of then House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and Ranking Member Tom Lantos. 

Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi has also spent decades campaigning in the United States for the rights of Kosovo Albanians and other Albanian communities in the Balkans. 

Joe Dioguradi’s father, who immigrated to the United States in 1929, was an Arbëresh—an ethnic Albanian from the Albanian-speaking communities of southern Italy. He was born in Greci, near Naples, one of dozens of Arbëresh communities that have preserved the Albanian language and culture in Italy.