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ITALY: Candidates Divided Over Migration

Analysis by Sabina Zaccaro

ROME, Apr 9 2008 (IPS) - Nothing seems to divide the two leading prime ministerial candidates in the election due this week more than the immigration issue.

Walter Veltroni, former mayor of Rome and leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, and his main opponent Silvio Berlusconi representing the conservative centre-right, both promise to lower taxes, cut public spending and reduce public debt (1.621 billion euros in January 2008). It is over Italy&#39s 3.7 million migrants (2006 figure) – 6.2 percent of the population – that they differ.

Tighter immigration controls has long been an aim of Berlusconi, whose government introduced the Bossi-Fini law, not repealed afterwards by the centre-left administration, that sets an annual quota for foreign workers, and only allows workers with job contracts to obtain a residence permit.

Others are held at detention centres, and then sent back to their country of origin.

Giulio Tremonti, expected to become finance minister if the centre-right coalition wins the elections Apr. 13-14, said in a TV debate Sunday that his group is against the "couscous, multi-ethnic country that opponents want."

The centre-right coalition presents migration as a threat to Italian citizens. "All those migrants who do not have regular residence must leave the country," its manifesto says.

But having a job is not enough. Immigrants prevented by prohibitive prices from finding stable accommodation are subject to restrictive measures.

Forced removals are common in Rome which has 250,000 immigrants, and in Milan, with a little more than 200,000. The centre-right administration in Milan boasted an average of "one removal a day" in 2007. That usually means more than one person a day.

In the latest of these last week, 800 Roma were forced to leave the biggest refugee camp in Northern Italy. Among those thrown out were children, pregnant women and labourers working ten hours a day and earning up to 800 euros a month. The local administration did not provide alternative accommodation.

Trade Unions are asking candidates of all parties to pledge institutional solutions, including housing, jobs, and education for children. "These &#39electoral&#39 removals without alternative solutions only worsen the situation," Onorio Rosati, secretary-general of the Milan Chamber of Work told IPS.

Berlusconi&#39s immigration policy now seeks more effective implementation of the Bossi-Fini law by "strengthening the expulsion process," Berlusconi ally Gianfranco Fini, co-author of the law, told reporters at a press conference Monday before the Rome Ponte Galeria immigrants detention centre. "To that end, we will open new detention centres if we win the elections."

Veltroni&#39s programme stresses instead on integration. It provides for regulating the right to asylum, introducing stronger laws to defend religious faith and freedom, and the right to vote after five years of regular residence.

"Immigration is not a threat, it is an opportunity. But to avoid that feeling of danger, it must be governed, rather than suffered," the Democratic Party manifesto says. The centre-left groups say the current restrictive law encourages clandestine entry by making regular entry impossible.

"The aberrant detention centres must be replaced by other kinds of reception centres, oriented to assisting migrants in the regularisation process," Anna Pizzo, independent regional Advisor for Lazio region told IPS. The Lazio regional council which is led by a centre-left council has proposed a law to give migrants waiting for regularisation the same rights as Italian citizens.

Italian migrant detention centres have been repeatedly criticised by human rights groups. A U.N. independent commission deplored the absence of assistance to migrants. A commission of the European Parliament spoke of "low quality food, scarce hygienic conditions, and lack of medical and legal assistance."

The last general elections in 2006 brought in a centre-left government headed by former EU Commission president Romano Prodi, with a weak majority in parliament. Prodi, whose coalition ranged from pro-Vatican moderates to unreformed Communists, lost a vote of confidence Jan. 24 this year.

Over a period of 20 months, the government&#39s programme was largely based on mediation among coalition partners rather than on reforms.

Prodi&#39s place at the head of the centre-left has been taken by Veltroni, elected though primary voting as secretary general of the newly formed Democratic Party last year – a moderate reformist group that brought together the two main parties that were in Prodi&#39s alliance. Smaller parties of the extreme left, like the Communist Refoundation and the Greens, have not been included in Veltroni&#39s group. They have merged to form the Rainbow Left.

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy&#39s prime minister from 2002 to 2006 and briefly in the 1990s, heads People of Liberty, a movement formed in February this year for the election by the two main centre-right parties. The movement has aligned with the federalist parties in North of Italy and Sicily.