By IPS Correspondents
ROME, Feb 10 1999 (IPS)

The business community in Italy welcomed the regularisation of the status of some 250,000 undocumented immigrants, the immense majority of whom work in jobs that Italians refuse to take.

The right-wing opposition, however, criticised the decree approved by the Council of Ministers Tuesday, which regularised the lion’s share of the immigrants who applied for legal status: 250,000 out of a total of 308,000.

One of the newly legalised immigrants was Belson Adjei, age 35, from Ghana. Adjei is a union delegate and shift foreman in a metallurgical factory which has 15 Italian and 15 foreign workers – 13 from Ghana, one Moroccan and one Albanian.

Like the enormous majority of the 1.2 million immigrants residing in Italy, most of whom are from the developing world (54.8 percent) and eastern Europe (23.6 percent), Adjei first came to Italy without documents.

“That was the most dangerous period,” he said. “There were many temptations to fall into the world of crime.”

In 1997, 47,792 immigrants were indicted for a range of offences, 8.7 percent of the total of 546,591 who faced charges, according to a government report.

Of the immigrants against whom charges were filed, 41.4 percent of the cases involved prostitution, 22.35 percent were drug- related offences and 15.4 percent involved robbery.

Of the total number of persons convicted in Italy, 13.2 percent were foreign nationals, who made up 28.4 percent of the prison population.

Amabile Carretti, the head of the Italian General Union Confederation (CGIL), maintained that many of the industries in northern Italy would have to shut down if the borders were closed.

The owner of the factory in which Adjei works, Alfredo Francia, said his small company had grown to an annual turnover of 10 million dollars since he started hiring immigrants.

“It is a lie that more immigration means more unemployment, because young Italians don’t want to work in factories, even though the work isn’t as heavy as it was before. Today they are like libraries, with so many computers,” said Francia.

“Parents even feel ashamed to have their children work in factories. They prefer for them to remain unemployed, rather than sending them to study a technical trade.

“Ok, so let them close the borders. But then the (parliamentary) deputies who vote for that should send their children to work in the factory,” he added.

Adjei agreed. “The fatique, social status, having to get up early…the explanation can be any of these. Many Italians come in here and leave after receiving their first pay check, and after buying that cell phone,” he said.

The applications for legal status came mainly from Albanians (40,000), followed by Romanians (24,000), Moroccans (23,000), Chinese (19,000), Nigerians (12,000) and Senegalese (11,000).

The decree issued by Italy’s centre-left government set four conditions to be met by applicants, who must have a job and a place to stay, no criminal records, and must have entered Italy prior to Mar 27, 1998, when the law on immigration currently in force was approved.

The Catholic Church welcomed the measure. On a number of occasions, Pope John Paul II has spoken out for the rights of immigrants.

The government also announced that it would crack down on traffickers of illegal immigrants, a phenomenon that especially involves Albanians, many of whom pay over 1,000 dollars for the 40- km journey across the Adriatic sea.

Most of them are captured and sent back home as soon as they step on Italian soil. Others drown when the flimsy, overloaded watercraft carrying them sink.

Italy’s migration policy bucks the European trend. Denmark and Britain, for example, are studying severe restrictions against immigration.

On Tuesday, the Labour government of Tony Blair announced that 100,000 undocumented immigrants would be deported. Denmark, meanwhile, has offered incentives for immigrants to return to their countries of origin.

In 1995, an estimated 1.8 million immigrants were residing in the 15 European Union member countries, 80 percent of whom came from outside the bloc.

Germany headed the list with seven million, followed by France (3.5 million) and the United Kingdom (2.2 million). In Italy, immigrants account for 1.9 percent of the total population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe.

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