Since Italy's unification in 1861, the establishment and diffusion of the standard Italian language at the expense of all other linguistic varieties has dominated language and education policy discourses. Today, as Italy has transformed from a country of mass "emigration" to a country of mass "immigration," the language learning of immigrants and refugees has become highly politicized. This politicization was exemplified in 2009 and 2010 when Italian law mandated the passing of a mostly written A2 Italian language test for the renewal of legal immigration documents. As a result, formal language learning has become another potentially prohibitory challenge for the already complicated legal status of many immigrants. This paper explores the historical macro-level discourses and policies concerning multilingualism, education and national identity in Italy from unification to the present context of immigration. Then, it discusses the local-level challenges of providing adult immigrant language and literacy education today. I argue that the politicization of immigrant language learning, with its subtractive instead of additive approach to multilingualism, has become a serious obstacle for the legal and educational outcomes of adult students with little or limited formal education and literacy backgrounds.