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Immigration; Italy Regularisation applications result in expulsion

01 March 2003

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A regularisation process (see Statewatch vol 13 no 1) aimed at legalising the position of migrant workers who are illegally employed in Italy, is turning into an expulsion trap for some of the over 700,000 applicants who submitted their applications within the 11 November 2002 deadline. It emerged in Milan that where the regularisation application is not accepted, expulsion procedures are automatically commenced.
La Repubblica newspaper reported on 9 March 2003 that 4,000 applications had been accepted, whereas in the 25 cases of rejections, expulsion procedures began. The migrants were reportedly tracked down at home or at work (information available on their applications) and brought to Milan´s Corelli immigrant detention centre, without any explanation other than that their applications were turned down. Parliamentary questions by Giuliano Pisapia (Rifondazione Comunista) and Luana Zanelli (Greens) asked “how is it possible that in a country with our judicial system foreign people who have made an application for regularisation and have an honest job can be taken from their homes and expelled without anyone telling them why they are no longer allowed to stay?”
A Caritas spokesperson claimed that the process is turning into a trap to identify and expel migrants, whereas an employer was concerned that he went through the trouble and costs of starting the legalisation procedure in good faith, and is now a worker short. On 11 March a judge in Corelli detention centre annulled ten of the expulsion orders. Turco from the PDS (Left Democratic Party) claimed that “The most elementary rights to defence are being contravened”. Expulsion from Italy carries a ten-year ban on re-entry, which may extend to the entire Schengen area in view of cooperation to combat illegal migration, and the use of the centralised SIS database.
La Repubblica 9-12.3.03.

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