Italy’s Senate Signs Off on Meloni’s Migrant
Crackdown
The package is the first major take on immigration by
the hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and would limit
integration and create more detention facilities.
By Gaia
Pianigiani
Reporting
from Rome
April 20,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/world/europe/italy-immigration-crackdown.html
Italy’s
Senate on Thursday passed the first comprehensive immigration package by the
hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which would curb
integration efforts, create new government-controlled migrant centers to house
those waiting on asylum applications and more detention facilities, as well as
establish harsher punishment for people smugglers.
Under the
new policies, migrants will have to stay in the centers until their asylum
applications are processed, which can take up to two years in Italy. While they
wait, they will not be able to seek independent lodging and will have a hard
time beginning any organic form of integration into communities. Italy is also
planning information campaigns in the migrants’ countries of origin to dissuade
them from leaving, in exchange for extra visa quotas.
Ms. Meloni
leads a coalition whose main parties have strong anti-immigrant agendas. The
coalition watered down one of the most contested parts of the package, which
would have canceled a program of two-year humanitarian permits for migrants who
do not meet the tight criteria of international protection. The move came after
criticism of a top adviser to Ms. Meloni who spoke of “ethnic substitution,” as
well as pressure from the opposition that raised doubts on compliance with
international laws.
Representatives
with the center-left Democratic Party have called the measures “punitive,” but
they are likely to also pass the lower house, where the governing coalition has
a large majority, and become law.
During her
campaign, Ms. Meloni made clear that her attention was focused on curbing
migrant arrivals and bolstering the employment levels of Italians. Opening
Milan Design Week on Tuesday, Ms. Meloni said that rather than relying on
migrant labor, Italy needed to employ “the large unused reserve” of women, who
in Italy work at record-low levels.
Prime
Minister Giorgia Meloni, center, at the Italian Parliament last month. She has
focused on curbing migrant arrivals.Credit...Riccardo Antimiani/EPA, via
Shutterstock
The package
also introduced a new crime — people smuggling that results in the death of
migrants — punishable by up to 30 years in prison. The measure was conceived
after a fatal shipwreck that killed 94 migrants off the coast of southern Italy
in February.
The
national debate over immigration grew increasingly heated this week, when
Parliament began examining the measures, and Ms. Meloni’s government vehemently
defended its choices to try to stem migration and prioritize assistance to
Italian families to have more children in a country with a steadily declining
birthrate.
Speaking to
a labor union on Tuesday, Italy’s minister of agriculture and food security and
a high-ranking member of Ms. Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy party,
Francesco Lollobrigida, said that the low birthrate and insufficient support
for Italian families could lead to “ethnic substitution.”
That “is
not the way forward,” he said, adding that it was important to combat illegal
and unregulated immigration.
A
processing center on the island of Lampedusa last year. Under the new policies,
migrants will have to stay in government-run centers while awaiting a verdict
on their asylum application.Credit...Alessandro Serrano/Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images
Mr.
Lollobrigida’s remarks spurred harsh criticism from the opposition. Elly
Schlein, the newly elected secretary of the Democratic Party, called them
“disgusting and unworthy of a minister.” Ms. Schlein told reporters at a rally
in central Rome against the new immigration package that Mr. Lollobrigida’s
comments were reminiscent of “white supremacy” theories and the 1930s, when
Mussolini’s fascist regime paid economic and welfare incentives to Italians
with large families.
Among those
at the rally, Abba Soulimani, 46, a worker from Ivory Coast, said that for
years she had been picking tomatoes in Italian fields.
“I don’t
see many Italians wanting to do my job,” Ms. Soulimani said. “So I don’t
understand why the government is so against us.”
Ms.
Meloni’s government has acknowledged that foreigners are needed for jobs that
companies regularly complain that they have a hard time recruiting for, like agriculture
jobs. And official estimates say that migrant workers would significantly help
economic development and even aid in lowering Italy’s enormous public debt.
During an
online registration day to attain permits for foreign workers last month, requests
from Italian companies were more than double the available visas, the
authorities said, and the agency’s website crashed trying to take them in.
Ms.
Meloni’s government began an overhaul of immigration policies last year, when
the Italian authorities decided to impose new rules on charities rescuing
migrants in the Mediterranean.
As the
number of arrivals has picked up significantly, the government declared a
six-month state of emergency earlier this month to allot extra funds and speed
up procedures to reduce congestion at the small immigration center on the
island of Lampedusa, where most migrants have been arriving this year. The
government is also building new “structures, suitable both for sheltering as
well as the processing and repatriation of migrants who don’t have the
requisites to stay,” a government statement read.
Immigration
has been a contentious political issue in Italy for decades. The coronavirus
pandemic significantly slowed arrivals in recent years, but the number of
migrants coming ashore in Italy has quadrupled this year, increasing political
tension over how to deal with them. More than 34,700 migrants have arrived so
far in Italy, compared with 8,600 in the same period in 2022.
Gaia
Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times. @gaia_pianigiani
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