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Italy: Regularisation of migrant workers:

01 January 2003

An extraordinary regularisation of illegally employed migrant workers resulted in 702,156 applications being submitted by the 11 November 2002 deadline, divided into domestic and care workers (341,121) and persons employed in subordinate employment (361,035). A law decree passed on 9 September 2002 invited "Anyone" who has "had non-EU workers in an irregular position in his employment, in the three months preceding the entry into force of this decree", to make a formal declaration to confirm this, that would allow the regularisation of these workers. The unexpectedly large number of applications means the Berlusconi government will be responsible for the largest regularisation of migrants ever conducted in Italy, in spite of the belligerent anti-immigration stance held by some parties in the government coalition (especially the Lega Nord and Alleanza Nazionale). It also resulted in the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Work and Social Policies employing 1,250 temporary workers in order to complete the scrutiny of applications. The head of the government's immigration department Anna Maria D'Ascenzo expects the scrutiny process to end within three months in smaller provinces, and by the end of 2003 in the five cities where the most regularisation applications were filed, that is, Rome, Milan, Naples, Turin and Brescia. Decreto-legge (law decree) 9 septembre 2002, n.195; Ministry of the Interior press statements, 13.9.02, 27.9.02, 19.2.03.