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IMMIGRATING TO EUROPE: Italy May Loosen its Borders

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 28 May 2006

The "without" - Migrants Governments Italy

A left-wing minister just appointed by Prime Minister Romano Prodi has outraged his opponents with a plan to legalize any foreigner in Italy with a job. The dust-up recalls a recent controversy in the US over "amnesty" for illegal aliens.

First it was the United States that began wrestling with how to deal with a ballooning illegal immigrant population. Next came Spain, as would-be African immigrants have begun targeting the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa as a possible new gateway to Europe. Now, it seems, it’s Italy’s turn.

Italy’s new social solidarity minister, Paolo Ferrero, touched off an immigration controversy last week by announcing that under Romano Prodi’s new center-left government, any foreigner with a job should be allowed to stay in the country. Italy is facing a growing number of illegal workers from Africa, which the outgoing center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi tried to manage with a quota system.

"Anyone with a job should have a residence permit," Ferrero told the Rome daily Il Messaggero in an interview published on Friday. "The system of quotas is largely insufficient and doesn’t respond to the needs of the industrial market." He also told Italian TV on Monday that shelter camps for immigrants, "where the immigrants are treated too badly," should be closed.

Ferrero is a member of the Communist Refoundation Party and was sworn in last week as Prodi’s Minister for Social Solidarity. He blamed the Berlusconi government’s 2002 Bosso-Fini law for worsening Italy’s immigration problem. Over 500,000 people applied two months ago for 180,000 work permits allowed under Bosso-Fini — which suggests that Italy has more illegal immigrants, and a larger black economy, than the government admits.

The question of "amnesty" is at least as volatile in Italy as it is in the US, where President Bush recently floated a politically controversial idea to give residency permits to illegal workers from Mexico. Most Italians, according to surveys, want their own illegal immigrants thrown out of the country, but two-thirds would be in favor of legalizing workers who already have jobs. But opposition to Ferrero’s idea was fierce.

"The declarations of Minister for Social Solidarity Paolo Ferrero on the delicate issue of immigration were met enthusiastically by the people who are waiting to set sail from other shores of the Mediterranean" said deputy Senate speaker Roberto Calderoli, who belongs to Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League. "Announcing the closure of temporary shelter camps and the abolition of the Bossi-Fini law will unleash an invasion."

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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,417730,00.html