Italy: Parties play the immigrants card

By Vaiju Naravane

PUGLIA (SOUTHERN ITALY), MAY 11. High wire fences encircle the Regina Pacis immigration centre in San Foca, in southern Italy's Puglia region. A depression has built up over this usually sunny corner of Italy and the sky is low and overcast.

The refugees sit huddled inside their temporary homes unused to the cold, the wind and rain. There are Kurds, Afghans, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and a sprinkling of Africans. Each of them has paid the equivalent of $8,000 to $10,000 to traffickers in human cargo to illegally bring them into Italy. ``I do not know what is going to happen to us, if we will be allowed to stay or sent back. We have spent all our money. We cannot pay for our return. So much has gone for the passage. If we return our families will be ruined,'' says Mr. Ahmed Sultan (23), an engineering student who says he left Bangladesh because of economic deprivation.

Some of the refugees have harrowing tales to tell - about how they spent months together in the hold of a ship, surviving on a near-starvation diet. Or how they were transferred from one ship to another in a place they were later told was Turkey.

``I left Sierra Leone because of the fighting, making my way to Guinea,'' recounts Mr. Joseph September who spent three months in a ship's hold with several other West Africans who were smuggled aboard. ``There was almost no food. For days on end, there was no water. Man, was I weak when we landed,'' he says with a self- conscious laugh. ``Then in the middle of the night we touched land. It was a jetty and the sailors were telling us, run, run to the other boat. So, we crossed the jetty and crammed into this other boat that brought us here. It was filled with all these people you see here - Indians and Chinese and people from other Asian countries,'' says Mr. Joseph.

Mr. Joseph and Mr. Sultan are among thousands of political refugees and economic migrants who wash up on Italy's coastal villages and towns each year. Last year alone, according to Interior Ministry statistics, over 26,000 illegal immigrants tried to enter Italy. Many of them are sent back immediately. But several thousand end up in official immigration centres where they register as asylum seekers.

``The Government has 30 days in which to study their files and decide whether they should stay or leave. Many are genuine political refugees or victims of civil war who have been pushed out of their homes and villages. The rest are economic migrants fleeing poverty and unemployment, seeking a better life. At the end of 30 days, the Government must repatriate those whose asylum demands have been rejected. However, the Government does not want to pay their fare. So, those marked out for repatriation in fact end up entering the illegal labour market because all we can do is to let them leave once their 30 days here are up,'' explains the Director of the Regina Pacis centre.

The international charity, Caritas, has been working with many of these refugees once they get out of the immigration centres. The Carita's office in Rome is jammed with refugees who have been ``allowed'' to stay. Many have made their way here from immigration centres like the one in San Foca. Akbar, Rashida and their five-year-old daughter Taslima are from Bangladesh. They have come for help to get Taslima enrolled in school. Without papers or a bank account, it is difficult to complete the administrative formalities.

``Immigration has become a huge issue although Italy has the smallest percentage of foreigners among the large E.U. nations. Less than three per cent of our population is made up of immigrants and the fear is quite irrational. Moreover, the same industrialists who employ these people as undeclared labour in their factories during the day, resent their presence in a bar or restaurant in the evening. All that is most irrational.''

Both the Alleanza Nazionale and the xenophobic Northern League which are part of Mr. Silvio Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition are taking a tough line on immigration. The Lega has said it will propose giving Coast Guards the right to shoot at dinghies and other craft ferrying illegal immigrants into Italy. The fact that the immigrants are prepared to work for far less than what local labour asks per hour has caused enormous heartburn among Italy's working classes, particularly in the south, like in Puglia where unemployment is as high as 20 per cent.

``These people are taking our bread away. There is no point denying it. Which is why I shall vote for the National Alliance,'' declared Mr. Gaetano, a mason and construction worker. ``They should be sent back to where they came from.''

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Section  : International
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