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In the so-called “reactivation decree”, which contains dozens of new measures to support the economy after the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, the government has also included a procedure to regularize part of the irregular migrants living in Italy. The measure was highly anticipated by immigration and integration experts and, according to informal estimates by the Interior Ministry, could affect some 200,000 people.
During negotiations with the majority, the Democratic Party and Italia Viva lobbied to pass more ambitious measures and regularize a good part of the approximately 600,000 irregular foreigners who, according to the latest estimates, live in Italy. The 5 Star Movement, the relative majority party in the government and in Parliament, has obtained some limitations to restrict the audience of interested people and link the measure to the enormous problem of harvesting fruit in agricultural fields. The result is a rather complex text that provides for regularization only for some specific categories of people who work or intend to work in the most problematic sectors: agriculture and farming, assistance to the elderly and home care.
The channels provided for by the decree are two. The first provides that employers can regularize employees or collaborators currently on the black market. If they are irregular migrants, they will automatically receive a residence permit. The second channel provides, for irregular migrants who were already working in the affected sectors, a six-month temporary permit to seek new employment in the agreed sectors.
– Also read: The “relaunch decree” explained
The final text of the “relaunch decree” has not yet been published in the Official Gazette, but the government has presented the main measures in a lengthy press release. In addition, sources close to the government do not expect substantial changes in the draft published by some newspapers and updated at 5 pm yesterday.
The rise of undeclared work
The government declaration establishes that “employers can request the execution of a subordinate employment contract with foreign citizens present in the national territory or declare the existence of an irregular employment relationship, still in progress, with Italian citizens or foreign citizens.” In essence, the government offers an amnesty for employers in certain sectors that illegally employ Italian citizens and foreigners illegally, who are granted a residence permit.
It is a measure that potentially affects many people who work permanently as domestic workers, caregivers or agricultural workers. The latter’s condition is particularly inhumane: they have no rights or medical care, they often work under the blackmail of violence, pay no taxes and, if they are foreigners, cannot leave the so-called “ghettos” in which they live out of fear to be discovered and receive an expulsion order According to an estimate by the Ministry of Agriculture, there are around 150 thousand irregular workers living in Italy.
The decree also stipulates that the employer may hire irregular foreigners with whom he previously had no employment relationship. According to government sources, the categories involved: Italian black and white workers, illegal foreign and black workers, illegal aliens that employers intend to hire, potentially include 560,000 people.
The opportunity to look for work
The second channel refers to irregular foreigners who must meet two conditions: having worked in the past in one of the three sectors provided for by the decree: agriculture and breeding, care for the elderly and the home, and having an expired residence permit from the October 31, 2019 onwards. . The government gives this category of people a six-month temporary job search permit: if they find it, the temporary permit can be converted into a regular residence permit.
According to government sources, the second channel is aimed primarily at workers who have lost their jobs in the past few weeks, because they may not have a lasting relationship with their employer, such as more experienced workers or caregivers, and want to escape their own job. “Corporal” is the person who acts as an intermediary who makes the crest of the employee’s salary, or organized crime. The people potentially affected by the second channel are around 180 thousand.
– Also read: What is the relationship between immigration and crime?
The job search permit is a relative novelty for the Italian legal system, which provides very few regular channels for moving to Italy from countries outside the European Union. A similar law came into force two months ago in Germany: It provides for several measures, including some controversial ones, but especially a new six-month residence permit that allows certain categories of workers to temporarily move to Germany to look for work.
It is likely that this channel is mainly aimed at the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have arrived in Italy by sea in recent years and whose application for protection has been rejected, for the most varied reasons. Often having no other solutions, these people remained in Italy at their own risk, agreeing to work in even more precarious and inhumane conditions than those who have been working for years as irregular.
Matteo Villa, an ISPI investigator who has been dealing with immigration for years, speculates that the government wanted “to find a remedy for the security decrees.” These are the decrees approved by former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, which in recent months have caused a considerable increase in irregular immigrants living in Italy, effectively obtaining the opposite effect compared to his name.
Villa claims that many immigrants who have lost the right to stay in Italy since last fall, a criterion explicitly mentioned in the current decree, could “reinvent themselves, also thanks to the indications of the operators who followed them” and request a temporary permit to finding work in the fields or at home, and thus waiting for a new path of regularization.
– Also read: The “security decrees” were a failure
A first big question
Both channels assume that an employer intends to regularize or hire an irregular alien if the state gives it an opportunity. According to some experts, the legal amnesty for crimes committed by employing an irregular worker, valid with the exception of crimes related to human trafficking, prostitution and exploitation, will not be enough to convince all employers to trust the state.
Also, why should they? From an economic point of view, unless there are special incentives, it will continue to be much more convenient to hire an illegal employee: they have very little contractual power, they do not have union rights, they are not protected by labor laws and, above all, they allow your boss evades contributions to the Italian tax authorities.
“If the Peruvian caretaker who has been working with my father for five years and has never been caught, what interest do I have to put her in order?” Asks lawyer Guido Savio, an expert in immigration law and member of the ASGI (Association for Legal Studies on Immigration): “The same happens with the worker: without incentives, the measure will be of little use.”
The government could introduce incentives later, for example, when the decree law reaches Parliament to be converted, in the next few weeks, or in one of the next decrees. At the moment, however, there is no trace of such a measure in the documents and interviews of members of the government.
Ways and times
The workers of the first channel will be administered by INPS, if they are Italian, or by the single window for the immigration of prefectures, if they are foreigners. Those on the second channel will have to go to the local police station. The window to request a regularization, valid for both channels, will be between June 1 and July 15, 2020. The times are quite tight, counting that the decree will be published in the Official Gazette only in the coming days.
However, agricultural trade associations have accused the government of having approved a measure whose schedule “does not coincide with that of companies.” This was stated by the president of Coldiretti, Ettore Prandini, speaking with the Print. “In the field, the needs are immediate, while regularization will take time,” added Prandini, who reiterated the proposal to create an “agricultural bonus” to accelerate the temporary hiring of people who will be employed in the harvest of fruits and vegetables ( unions have already rejected it when speaking of “a tool that makes work precarious”).
However, the government appears to have collected the indications from the farmers. In the draft distributed yesterday, paragraph 13 of article 110 bis clearly specifies that the foreigner who requests to be regularized through one of the two channels receives “a certificate that allows the interested party to remain legitimately in the territory of the State […] and do subordinate work. “
The residence permits obtained through both channels are linked to the employment contract, but government sources announce that, in the event of loss of employment, regularized persons will not automatically return to an irregular state, but will have more time. to look for a new job.
Who is left out
“We are talking about a very partial and very sectoral regularization,” says Savio, noting that there are entire categories of irregular foreign workers who have been excluded from the decree. Savio quotes workers in the logistics or craft sector; Villa adds those who work in construction or the delivery sector. There is no protection even for irregular women victims of trafficking and violence.
Given the urgency of the measure, the simplest explanation is that the categories for which regularization was most important, such as farmers, put more pressure on the government to get what it wants.
Then there are the people who currently remain in limbo. “We need to understand how the expression” related activities “that refers to the three sectors will be interpreted,” Savio explains, citing one of the first paragraphs of the draft. “Will those who work illegally in feed production or work as butchers be considered part of the production chain?”
The situation of asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their application or the appeal filed after the denial will also be paradoxical. Given that in recent months the percentage of acceptance of applications has decreased a lot due to the so-called “security decrees”, paradoxically it could be convenient for applicants to interrupt the legislative process of the application and request a temporary permit to look for work, regardless of the merit of your request
In an interview published today by Republic, Minister for the South Giuseppe Provenzano, who in recent days has continued the regularization negotiation on behalf of the Democratic Party, has clarified that he does not consider the measure to be a particular success. “I do not encourage, I do not wave flags,” he said. Republic. “With these power relations we have achieved everything possible.”
It will work?
Most immigration experts generally believe that regularizations provide tangible benefits both for migrants, who obtain rights and a regular contract, and if they cannot safely go to the authorities and the state. Countryside I was a foreigner, which for years has been promoting an amnesty aimed at irregular migrants, has estimated that the state would get around a billion euros more each year for higher tax revenues due to contributions paid by irregular workers. Not to mention the public health and safety benefits, particularly important in a period of global pandemic.
According to Matteo Villa, each regularization must be judged in a positive way, even if it is still too early to understand whether the approval will have the expected effects. For Villa, it is still a measure limited to some sectors, with some obvious defects, such as the absence of economic incentives, and to a lesser extent than those approved in previous years: “Two hundred thousand people seem to be many but they are few, considering that in the past the amnesties have been much larger, the 2002 one approved by the Berlusconi government involved more than 600,000 people, and that in Italy we have had the highest levels of irregularities for almost twenty years. “
In particular, Villa has doubts about the effectiveness of the second channel, which guarantees a temporary permit to look for work. Migrants who must report to the police headquarters essentially agree to self-report and provide the state with a series of confidential data, such as the residence address and their personal data. It means, trivially, that the state will know exactly where to find it if it had not found a job in six months. It is a concrete possibility, especially in sectors without particular urgency, such as fruit picking. “It is a somewhat strange measure,” Villa explains: “the state helps you for a short time but then you get back to the point.”
Other observers considered the measure as a battle won, despite everything: “it is an important, albeit partial, step towards the recognition of the rights and dignity of hundreds of thousands of people”, commented the committee I was a foreigner.
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