Irregular immigration does not stop even in the middle of the second Covid wave
There is a video circulating on social media . Lega leader Matteo Salvini published it to comment on the fact that in just five days, from 1 to 5 November, 2,462 irregular emigrants landed in Italy. A rubber dinghy loaded with young people seems to be all Africans close to landing in Lampedusa. They smile, a boy waving it would look like a scarf with "Italy" written on it. Someone off screen encourages them to show joy. A voice invites them to say "liberty, liberty, Italy liberty". Then the boys raise their hand with index and middle fingers as a sign of victory, one who perhaps did not understand shows thumb and forefinger, and shout "Itali-a, Itali-a" . Since the beginning of 2020, 29,952 irregular migrants have arrived in Italy by sea; from 2014 to 2019, 659,588 arrived.
Probably no one knows exactly how many then reached other European countries, how many were expelled and repatriated, how many remained in Italy. However, the Ministry of the Interior provides us with some reliable data. One is the number of asylum seekers, that is, people who have claimed to be fleeing threats to life and freedom, from wars and persecution, and have claimed the legal status of refugee. From 2014 to 2019, 498,524 illegal emigrants applied for asylum in Italy. All were included in the reception system created in 2002 to assist them, since 2015 structured in first reception centers and CAS, extraordinary reception centers, where they can stay until, after months and even years, their request is definitively rejected or approved.
Each CAS guest benefits from free food, accommodation, clothing, health assistance, money for small expenses and much more: from Italian lessons to training courses and start-up to work to sports activities to fill free time. It also has interpreters, cultural mediators, legal operators, social workers and other professional figures considered useful for its psychophysical well-being. In the case of an unaccompanied minor, social educators, children's rights experts and a legal guardian are added. For an adult, 35 euros per day have been allocated. Maintaining an unaccompanied minor can cost up to 120 euros per day (the endowment of the Fund for the reception of unaccompanied foreign minors was almost 170 million euros for the year 2019 and is 170 million for the years 2020 and 2021) .
The task of examining asylum applications is entrusted to the Territorial Commissions, administrative bodies set up within the Prefectures, made up of four members: the president, an official of the State Police, a representative of the local reference body and a representative of the '' United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, supported by state-paid interpreters and cultural mediators. If the outcome is positive, the asylum seeker obtains international protection, has the right to reside in Italy and to enter Siproimi , an integration program lasting six months, possibly extendable for another six. If it is negative, the applicant has 30 days to appeal to the Supreme Court (until the end of 2018, before the security decrees of the then Minister of the Interior Salvini came into force, it was 60 days), also a practice entirely paid by the state: legal fees, interpreters, cultural mediators. In fact, emigrants, like Italian citizens, benefit from free legal aid if they are indigent. They should prove they are by consular certification. But starting at least from 2014, a series of courts have decided that to prove the lack of income in the country of origin, and therefore obtain free legal aid, a self-certification with the unsuccessful application attached to your consulate is sufficient. This service alone for asylum seekers costs between 50 and 60 million euros per year.
Between 2015 and 2019, 435,068 asylum requests were submitted, 430,382 were examined and processed. Legal refugee status was granted to 8 percent of applicants and subsidiary protection to 10 percent. Overall, 18 percent of asylum seekers obtained international protection. In Italy, a residence permit for humanitarian reasons was also established which at the end of 2018 was replaced by Special Protection, granted in 2019 to 616 people, equal to 1 percent of the 95,060 requests examined during the year. At the end of 2019, ten first reception centers and 6,004 CAS housed 66,958 asylum seekers. In the 809 Siproimi projects at the survey last July, there were 30,682 people with international protection.
We will know in January how many irregular migrants who arrived in 2020 applied for asylum, how many were repatriated and how many lost track. We already know of one: the one who arrived in Lampedusa in September and who on 29 October killed three people in the church of Notre Dame in Nice. He is hospitalized in Nice, according to the newspaper Le Figaro , and tested positive for Covid-19 .
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/limmigrazione-irregolare-non-si-ferma-nemmeno-in-piena-seconda-ondata-covid/ on Mon, 09 Nov 2020 03:49:33 +0000.