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Viewing cable 09ROME437, NO MORE MR. NICE GUY (I): INEFFECTIVE ITALIAN
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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin |
---|---|---|---|---|
09ROME437 | 2009-04-17 12:47 | 2011-02-24 16:00 | CONFIDENTIAL | Embassy Rome |
VZCZCXRO2604
PP RUEHAG RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHRO #0437/01 1071247
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 171247Z APR 09
FM AMEMBASSY ROME
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1940
INFO RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHDS/AMEMBASSY ADDIS ABABA PRIORITY 0789
RUEHAS/AMEMBASSY ALGIERS PRIORITY 0563
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING PRIORITY 1354
RUEHBM/AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST PRIORITY 0618
RUEHKV/AMEMBASSY KYIV PRIORITY 0318
RUEHML/AMEMBASSY MANILA PRIORITY 0173
RUEHRB/AMEMBASSY RABAT PRIORITY 0433
RUEHTI/AMEMBASSY TIRANA PRIORITY 4336
RUEHTU/AMEMBASSY TUNIS PRIORITY 0517
RUEHCL/AMCONSUL CASABLANCA PRIORITY 0042
RUEHMRE/AMCONSUL MARSEILLE PRIORITY 0234
RUEHMIL/AMCONSUL MILAN PRIORITY 9986
RUEHNP/AMCONSUL NAPLES PRIORITY 3768
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS PRIORITY 4804
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ROME 000437
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/17/2014
TAGS: PREL PGOV PREF IT
SUBJECT: NO MORE MR. NICE GUY (I): INEFFECTIVE ITALIAN
RESPONSE TO IMMIGRATION CHALLENGES
ROME 00000437 001.2 OF 003
Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Elizabeth L. Dibble for reasons 1.4 (b
) and (d).
Summary
--------
¶1. (SBU) Recent tragic reports of boatloads of African
immigrants crossing from Libya to Lampedusa, a 12 square mile
island off of the coast of Sicily, have transfixed local,
regional and international audiences. The arrivals have
accelerated a law and order approach to irregular immigration
promised by Prime Minister Berlusconi during his election
campaign in 2008 and distilled in the recent public promise
to ""be mean to illegal immigrants"" by Interior Minister
Maroni, a leader in the anti-immigration Northern League
political party. But forceful public diplomacy, new and
reinvigorated bilateral repatriation agreements with source
countries, outreach to the EU, extended detention of
irregular immigrants and tough security legislation have
failed to stop the flows of irregular immigrants. The
dramatic plight of the boat people, most of whom are
undocumented, masks the fact that they constitute less than
15 percent of total arrivals of irregular migrants (although
there was a 75 percent surge in the number of immigrants
arriving by boat in 2008 and the trend line in the first
quarter of 2009 appears constant). The majority of irregular
immigrants present in Italy -- estimated to number up to
650,000 but the number is likely even higher -- arrive by
land, air or sea. Arriving from non-EU countries, primarily
Morocco, Albania, China, Ukraine and the Philippines, they
have obtained visitors visas and overstay, encouraged by
Italy's porous borders and history of ""regularizing"" illegal
immigrants. Although Italy successfully expelled some 25,000
persons in 2008, a majority of expulsion orders are not
executed because of a lack of resources; Italy has less than
3,000 available beds for detention. In addition to the
irregular migrants from non-EU countries, Italy is a popular
destination for migrants from Eastern European countries such
as Romania and Bulgaria, whose citizens are able to move
freely following EU accession in 2007.
¶2. (SBU) Frustrated by the non-stop flow of migrants to and
through Italy, government officials complain privately about
Libya's complicity in the trafficking of refugees and the
failure of the EU to do more to help the southern tier states
cope with the problem. They have mounted an aggressive
diplomatic campaign with affected states to win their
cooperation in limiting irregular flows to Italy, including
hosting a conference April 16-17 for police chiefs of 72
nations. Although Interior Ministry officials have told the
embassy that they believe there is little terrorist threat
from irregular immigrants, and government statistics reveal
an overall drop in crime in all major Italian cities in 2008,
Prime Minister Berlusconi, Interior Minister Maroni, other
senior officials, and the Italian press (of which Berlusconi
controls a majority) continuously hype a connection between
crime and terrorism and illegal immigrants. Critics of the
government's approach argue that Italy needs a comprehensive
integration policy that acknowledges the demographic changes
in Italian society -- an aging population, a declining birth
rate and the presence of some four million foreign residents
in a population of 60 million. They argue that immigration
should be treated as a resource, not a threat, and fear that
scapegoating irregular immigrants will radicalize Italy's
""second generation"" of legal migrants, including more than
one million Muslim immigrants.
¶3. (SBU) This is the first in a series of three reporting
cables on immigration in Italy. This first reporting cable
describes the current situation. The second reports on the
government's reaction to the immigration challenge. The
third examines concerns about the limitations of the
government's approach and previews the outlook for the
future.
Current Situation: Rubbery Statistics
ROME 00000437 002.2 OF 003
-------------------------------------
¶4. (SBU) Statistics. In defining the immigration picture in
Italy, government and NGO statistics generally agree that in
2008 Italy had 3, 433,000 resident legal immigrants out of a
total population of 59,619,290 people. In addition, there
are 767,000 immigrant children under the age of 18. Another
250,000 persons have applied for legal status. (Note:
According to Italy's citizenship law, a foreigner born in
Italy cannot apply for citizenship until the age of 18. A
legal resident must wait ten years before applying for
citizenship. Neither category is permitted to travel outside
of Italy during these waiting periods. On the other hand,
foreigners who marry Italian citizens can acquire citizenship
in a relatively straightforward process. Given the overall
difficulties in acquiring Italian citizenship, a significant
number of legal immigrants are not citizens. Rather they
possess residence permits, typically tied to employment,
issued by the government. End note.) Of these approximately
four million legal immigrants, the charity Sant'Egidio
estimates up to one million are EU residents, and the
majority of these are Romanian. Of the remaining three
million legal residents from non-EU countries, approximately
one million are Muslim. The result is that there are almost
7 foreigners in every 100 Italians, slightly over the EU
average, although the ratio increases to 10 in Rome and 14 in
Milan. Since 1986, Italy has undertaken five
""regularizations,"" granting more than one million residence
permits to previously irregular migrants. Estimates of the
current number of irregular immigrants range from half a
million to 650,000 and higher, although no one knows for
sure.
¶5. (SBU) Irregular labor market. According to Caritas, a
Catholic charity that provides government-funded support to
immigrants, two-thirds of Italy's immigrants are working in
Italy's industrialized north. Most work in small firms. The
balance engage in family care throughout Italy and in
seasonal agricultural work predominantly in the south. The
Italian research institute IMSU recently completed an
in-depth survey of the immigration situation in the region of
Lombardy, including Milan, which illustrates this employment
picture. In 2008, there were just over one million
immigrants in Lombardy, a 13 percent increase since 2007.
Half of this population is estimated to be irregular and
these persons work in the following sectors: 14.6 percent as
industry laborers; 13.1 percent as construction workers; 9.8
percent in the restaurant/hotel industry; 7.1 percent as
domestics on an hourly basis; and 6.5 percent as live-in
domestics.
¶6. (SBU) Boat migrants. One small slice of the illegal
immigrant population is well-documented: the approximately
15 percent who make their way from Africa across the
Mediterranean in flimsy and overcrowded boats. The IOM
registered the arrival of 31,236 persons by boat to Lampedusa
in 2008. The Interior Ministry records a total number of 36,
951 persons arriving by boat to the southern Italian regions
of Apulia, Sardinia, Sicily (including Lampedusa) and
Calabria in 2008. By contrast the number of persons arriving
by boat recorded by the Interior Ministry in 2007 was 20,455
-- a 75 percent increase from one year to the next.
According to the IOM, the major source countries of the
arrivals in Lampedusa in 2008 were Tunisia (6,799), Nigeria
(6,070), Somalia (4,106), Eritrea (3,374), Morocco (2,032),
Ghana (1,802), and Palestine (833). Significantly, the
number of Tunisians arriving in Lampedusa jumped by nearly
six thousand persons in 2008. According to UNHCR, 31,200
persons requested asylum in Italy in 2008; some 8,000 were
granted asylum. This represents an almost 30 percent
increase in asylum requests since 2005.
¶7. (C) Sea crossing. Nearly all of the persons arriving by
boat in Lampedusa departed from Libya. NGOs who work with
immigrants report that traffickers tell the boat migrants to
head for an ENI oil rig platform. Upon arrival at the
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platform, they are told to head due north to Lampedusa. Each
year 120,000 persons out of 450,000 immigrants to Europe are
estimated to cross the Mediterranean by boat, and no one
knows for sure how many die in the attempt. In the first
quarter of 2009, hundreds of refugees have continued to
arrive by boat each week in Lampedusa. Although all states
are required under international law to render assistance to
refugees in distress, there is a presumption in Italy that
the Italian border police undertake the lion's share of the
response to distress calls, a perception shared by NGOs. One
former member of the Carabinieri who worked for Interpol told
us that when FRONTEX, the EU border control agency, receives
reports of boats in distress, all governments in the region
are notified, but only the Italians regularly take active
steps to rescue the migrants. During a visit to Malta in
February, a member of the Armed Forces of Malta told us the
AFM responds to distress calls within its limited capacity,
but admitted if the boat is deemed seaworthy the AFM points
the migrants toward Lampedusa.
¶8. (C) Overstayers. Government and NGO officials tell us,
however, that the majority of irregular immigrants enter
Italy with a visa and then overstay. Italian border police
chief Rodolfo Ronconi asserted that 57 percent of immigrants
who enter Italy with a visa overstay. Most arrive through
the land border in the northeast but also through air and sea
ports. Vincenzo Delicato, a senior director of the National
Police, told us that these illegal immigrants are primarily
from Morocco, Albania, China, Ukraine and the Philippines.
He explained that the border police do not screen EU
residents and conduct only spot checks on non-EU residents.
Interior Ministry statistics for 2008 record 70,625
""stranieri rintracciati"" (or ""tracked foreigners,"" an
implicit acknowledgement of a population of untracked
foreigners), of whom only 24,234 were repatriated. The
remaining 46,931 were considered not in compliance with
expulsion orders. The 2007 statistics are comparable. Other
government statistics indicate that only 20 percent of
illegal immigrants subject to an expulsion order are actually
repatriated. For example, in Milan in 2007, only 653 persons
out of 3,088 subject to an expulsion order were in fact
repatriated.
¶9. (C) Insufficient capacity. There are several
explanations for this large presence of irregular immigrants.
First, according to the vice president of immigration for
Caritas, Le Quyen Ngo Dinh, ""Italy does not really know how
they arrive and how many they are,"" meaning that most
visitors are not subject to border control or judicial
review. Second, for those who come into contact with the
state and are judged as irregular, Italy has limited
detention space: nationwide there are 10 centers of
identification and expulsion, with a capacity of fewer than
3,000 beds, and a handful of ""welcome"" centers near southern
Italian seaports to screen immigrants arriving by boat. The
result is that Italy cannot detain all those subject to
expulsion order, which means many of them simply fail to
comply. Moreover, some of those expelled return, gambling
correctly that they can again slip through Italy's porous
borders, including 1,500 miles of coastline. Third, many
governments of source countries refuse to cooperate with
Italian authorities in identifying undocumented immigrants.
These individuals can still be subject to expulsion orders
but cannot be repatriated without an identity.
Fundamentally, argues Ngo Dinh, Italy lacks the structural
capacity to manage the large numbers of illegal migrants to
the country. As Paolo Ciani, who helps immigrants for the
Italian charity Sant'Egidio, said simply: ""Not only is the
government policy (dealing with immigrants) morally wrong,
it's ineffective.""
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