Immigration

The current law that governs immigration in Italy is called ‘Legge Bossi-Fini’; once known as ‘Testo Unico’ and then ‘Legge Turco-Napolitano’. All these names depend on the various changes made by different governments to the original law. You can find a clear summary of that law in the article of La Repubblica. If you want more information you can also visit the web site of the Italian ‘Ministero dell’Interno’ or this link to wikipedia, which is very clear. At the end of 2006 the immigrants who lived regularly in Italy were 3.000.000, 5% of the Italian population (59.131.000 ca). Most of the immigrants come from Albania, Romania, Morocco, Cina and Ucraina. All these countries are outside the European Union.

In Italy immigration is a quite recent phenomenon compared to other countries. We appear very distrustful of foreigners but not of all of them; especially of those people coming from east Europe. We tend to associate them with criminals. Our behaviour is probably connected with what we read on newspapers, but I think there’s something else which is connected with the difficulty to accept a new multi-cultural society. We are not ready. Not yet. The only explanation I can find is that, as I said before, immigration in Italy is a recent phenomenon. We are not born in a mixed culture like the US and we haven’t been educated to live within cultural diversities. I’m also convinced of the fact that Italy tends to have a very short memory. We don’t remember that in 1920s our country was a land of emigration and we as Italians have been for a long time emigrants.