Love in the time of Bossi-Fini: The Impact of Italy's Immigration Legislation

[Joe McCarthy]

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/al...gislation.html

Prior to the 1980s Italy didn't consider immigration as a particularly pressing problem. Throughout its post-war history, in fact, the country had suffered far more from large-scale emigration, as thousands left the impoverished and largely job-less southern regions to become gastarbeiters in wealthier European countries like Germany. A massive influx of refugees from Eastern Europe, provoked by the fall of the iron curtain and the outbreak of war in neighbouring Yugoslavia, at the start of the 1990s changed the situation radically, leading to pressure for a comprehensive policy to regulate the legal position of foreigners entering Italy (both legally and illegally).

After tentative efforts in 1990 (the so-called Martelli law), the first real attempts at legislation came in 1998, during Romano Prodi's first government, with the Turco-Napolitano law, named after the ministers inolved in commissioning the legislation - Livia Turco, now Minister for Health, and Giorgio Napolitano, now President of the Republic. While this legislation provided for guaranteed healthcare for legal and illegal immigrants, and other enlightened measures, it also allowed for various repressive measures including the establishment of the infamous CPT centres (Centri di permanenza temporanea e assistenza) where foreigners who are unable to provide proof of their identity and legal status are collected and held while deportation proceedings get underway. These centres have been criticised by organisations such as Amnesty international, Medici Senza Frontiere, and the Council of Europe committe on the prevention of torture , but have remained a cornerstone of Italy's immigration policy with both centre-left and centre-right governments.

The 2001 election victory of Silvio Berlusconi's coalition, the somewhat ironically named - at least for immigrants - Casa della Liberta [house of freedom] put immigration legislation firmly centre stage. Indicative of the importance given to the 'immigration issue' by the government was the fact that two party leaders of the coalition undertook to introduce new legislation, Gianfranco Fini (leader of the Alleanza Nazionale party, and deputy prime minister for much of Berlusconi's administration), and Umberto Bossi (leader of the Lega Nord). The so-called Bossi-Fini legislation introduced further repressive measures, making it a criminal offence, for example, to disobey an expulsion order. Illegal immigrants found in Italy after having received a deportation order would face a jail sentence of between one to four years. At the same time labour market demand has forced both left and right wing governments to repeatedly introduce amnesties for illegal immigrants sponsored by Italian employers. So over fifteen years after the first attempts at 'controlling' immigration, a lot of legislation exists, coupled with a lot of grey areas. Grey areas that have a direct impact on the lives of thousands of people who make up Italy's immigrant community.

Journalist Cristina Artoni decided to concentrate on some of the human stories that occur, between the commas and paragraphs of the legislation. Speaking about the title of the book she has published which collects these stories, l'amore ai tempi della Bossi Fini [love in the time of Bossi-Fini], she explains "it's taken from the title of the book by Garcia Marques [Love in the time of Cholera], because he's a master at recounting the surreal, and that's the condition where we often find the, let's say 'non-Italian' - It makes me uncomfortable sometimes to use the phrase foreigner..."

The real-life characters encountered by Artoni come from Togo, from Brasil, Cuba, the Ukraine, Canada, and find themselves in Italy not just for love: some for work, others to be with a loved one, some were even born here. What, then, where the criteria for choosing cases to feature in the book? "They had to be cases that would be illustrative of the panorama, the result of the Bossi-Fini legislation. So, together with a lawyer, we chose cases that could demonstrate how absurd this law is, that really does push people to end up in stories that verge on the surreal."

Diving in at the deep end, one particularly tragic story is that of Amor, the Morrocan fiance of an Italian woman from Brescia, that was found dead in the boot of the girl's Golf in August 2004, while she tried to smuggle him into Italy. In this particular case, though, isn't it perhaps excessive to ascribe the blame for the tragedy to Italy's entry regulations? The two were following procedures and had initiated procedures to get married, so the man would have eventually been allowed to enter Italy in some manner. Surely then it was, with all the respect and compassion that the case calls for, a death that was avoidable? Artoni doesn't agree: "Yes, it could have been avoided, but from a certain point of view the two youths had already waited over a year! For someone in that type of situation - and maybe there's no-one who finds themselves in this exact situation - it's difficult to understand, but I think there's an urgency to love, it's even perhaps a bit embarrising to have to explain, but there is an urgency... When someone is in love, they want to shar their time, so I think that given that the prerogative to have a normal, non-illegal life in Italy was there, all this wasted time seems strange. I think also it highlights one of the tragic points of the Bossi-Fini law: it gives so much discretion to the embassies to make decisions over people's lives. This was one of the stories that moved me the most, because to die in circumstances like that, when there was every possibility to be happy, has to be even more tragic".

How much, though, are the difficulties that immigrants face linked to xenophobia, and racism, and how much simply to the administrative system in operation, notoriously bureaucratic also for Italian citizens. For example, I myself a number of years ago had to accompany a friend (who coming from a European member state, one would presume faces entry procedures that should be taken care of almost immediately) to the police headquarters in Bologna to request information about the form required for the now infamous 'permesso di soggiorno' or foreigner's permit of stay in Italy. At the time there was a specific office for information, which has now been closed, complicating matters further. Today one office, with two desks exists where a long queue of nervous people from both EU and non-EU countries line up to request forms, request information, collect permits [startlingly inefficient - one has to queue, for example, simply to get a form to fill in].
Returning to my friend and his arrival in Bologna, aware that this could simply be an isolated incident, I'll never forget the bad manners and arrogance of the bureaucrat charged with giving information on how to make the application for permits. At a certain point, in response to my request for clarification on a point (how many photocopies should be attached to the form), she barked back at me 'but you're Italian aren't you? Then you should understand our language'. I immagined to myself how difficult and terrifying it must be for someone recently arrived to have to deal with this kind of treatment. Someone who doesn't speak the language, who feels hunted, who perhaps has arrived illegaly, paying an unscrupulous trafficker, and without any idea about Italian laws and ways, what safeguards do these people have to be treated 'humanely'? Cristina has no doubts answering the question "Are we Italians racist?", and responds with a dry 'yes, we're very racist. I'd say we're racist and closed. We're not used to accepting new cultures and this is a long process. I lived for a period in France, and it was one of the aspects that I liked the most, even if there, as we've seen with the explosion of the banlieues there are contradictions, but there is a multicultural aspect present in cities like Paris. We're racist and tend to see, still, the foreigner as an enemy".

And so we arrive to talk about the actual laws that govern immigration, the infamous Bossi-Fini laws from 2002. "This law is, in a way, the expression of the racism that exists in Italy," says Cristina. "I think there's nothing worse than creating a law in our republic that expresses in fact this type of racism, because we creat a sort of bureaucracy, a labirynth in which by definition you often get lost. And we've done it precisely for that purpose, it's clear, and now we even risk being copied by other European countries". I ask her what, in her opinion, the cruelest points of the law are, those that need most urgently to be modified, and what kind of changes should be made. In the appendices to the book, Artoni compiles a brief history of Italy's immigration laws, but admits that 'I'm not a specialist, so I'd turn obviously towards the legal experts, and lawyers who work in the area of immigration in general. The thing that worries me the most is the repressive apparatus that's been put in place to achieve what are, in reality, poor results. a result that is costly both economically and in terms of human life. So, in my opinion, there's a lot to re-examine, there's a need to re-examine the use of public monies and to put them towards the initial reception of immigrants. Amongst the different points I'd highlight, one is the possibility of access [reserved solely] for those who already have a job. I think that it's poorly thought out measure that obliges lots of people to lie, from the employer, to the immigrant, to the police responsible for public security. In practice in Italy access is reserved for those who already have a job, but what do you do if you don't have a job and know nobody? So in reality the trick plays out like this: you arrive illegally, find a job, and then return to your home country, to be recalled by your employer, through the embassy, and this process can take between 6-8 months. So, it's a huge waste of time and money, and encourages falsity. I think we need to give foreigners the possibility of a period of time to enter in Italy, to give them the chance to search for work without feeling hunted. The other most important aspect I'd say is the existence of the CPT centres, which in reality are special, illegal prisons where one finds the complete suspension of legal rights for those who end up inside; as I show in the book, it's not just people who have a criminal record and need to be deported who end up in these centres, but also people whose papers aren't in order or who are missing a document". For example, the case of Lilli detailed in the book, a young woman from the economically devestated Ukraine who, having entered Italy with a valid tourist visa, started working as the primary carer for an elderly Italian woman.The family for whom she worked did everything they could to get her papers in order, but two years after her arrival she was rounded up a periodic crackdown by the police. She was detained in prison-like conditions in a CPT, without access to her employers (who tried in vain to get her released) or legal advice, before being deported to the Ukraine.

"I think these centres should be closed as soon as possible," she continues, "and transformed into reception centres, but real ones though because there are already centres with that title but inreality they're anything but - in reality they're prisons - and the management should be transferred to N.G.O's or voluntary associations, but above all away from the forces of law and order. The forces of law and order as we know are trained to intervene in situations of public disorder, not in these types of situations."

Acting as the Devil's advocate I suggest that one of the most common objections, particularly from people who perhaps have little dealings with the subject, is that by lightening the restrictions on entry into Italy, one makes it easier for possible terrorists and criminals to enter, against whom some sort of filter is necessary. "There are, and always will be controls. For example, even with the quotas established it's not a given that they can check every person who enters into Italy. I think that giving the possibility to people to enter Italy is simply a way to allow people to stay within the limits of the law, to not become clandestine or to have to choose a situation of illegality. There are always controls, so it's not useful to push people into fraud, into deception, because apart from anything that way we create huge networks that profit on the backs of the immigrants."


Something that is missing from the book, perhaps intentionally, is the viewpoint of those who designed or called for this legislation on immgration, and also that of those who have to enforce it in the field, the forces of law and order. "It was a choice, because in reality space obliges you to choose. It was also a political choice, up to a certain point, because I wanted to give voice to the people on 'the other side', no? The people who framed these laws have all the structures, all the media on their side, and we see that even left-wing newspapers, like Repubblica, tend to discuss immigration in terms of 'problems', of an 'emergency'. We have to then try to point out that these are above all people, and after that foreigners, that they have a cultural baggage that we can put to use, we have to see them with different eyes. In the end I didn't want to talk in terms of those who are trying to escape extremely difficult social and economic conditions, but rather in terms of those who come to Italy with an interest, be it work, or love, who are in a sense linked to 'the other'".

The presentation of immigrants, then, is also part of the problem. The type of articles, the type of news stories that get carried by the newspapers, the tv and radio news help to form public opinion. For example, according to research carried out by Censis, in television newsreports in 78% of the cases where imigrants are mentioned, they are portrayed in a negative light and in 56% of the cases the stories concern criminality or illegality. Artoni agrees "Imigrants are always treated as if they are all clandestine, they all seem as if they've come to steal our jobs, they're all like criminals, no? I think it's extremely important, in the sense that we have to open our eyes to a reality that Italy must face; we're in a period of globalisation, which doesn't just signify the free movement of capital and ideas, but also the movement of people. We have to find away to open these borders with intelligence if possible, and not treat everybody like invaders. We're not at risk of invasion! There's a cultural heritage on our doorstep that deserves to be valued".

One case that particularly interested me was that of Helena, born in Florence to Egyptian parents, who, on turning 18, as a result of the Bossi-Fini laws, found herself deprived of her right to Italian citizenship, as her father, unemployed since 2002, was unable to renew his permit to stay ("Children, according to the law, have the same judicial status as the parent, so if the parent is regular so are the children", Artoni explains in the book). In practice this girl, perfectly integrated in her society and school, without even knowing and without warning, other than being the daughter of someone whose papers are no longer in order, found herself from one day to the next as a clandestine that the majority of public opinion erroneously and unfairly associates with subterfuge, unbecoming conduct, illegality, and even with criminality and international terrorism.

How are these children of imigrants treated in other European countries? Sadly the situation isn't much rosier in multicultural France: Judith Revel, philosophy teacher in a school on the periphery of Paris told L'Espresso in 2006 that " a part from the sans papiers, who in effect are not French and will, sooner or later, have problems when they become adults, they're all French' [...] In September, they took one, who was put in a cpt at Roissy airport, awaiting a flight for Cameroon. [...] I know of about ten sans papiers in the school. But how many are there who haven't been told? How many people work outside the system to survive? How many of them can't count on the health system?" Considering the explosion of violence that we saw in France in 2005, and last year in the French peripheries, there's little to congratulate ourselves here about the efficiency of a law that sooner or later will create an army of kids who, after eighteen years of being 'Italian', risk finding themselves as sans papiers, forcing them to queue endlessly to request a piece of paper that allows them to continue living and socialising in the country in which they were born and raised.