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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ROME 000437 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/17/2014 
TAGS: PREL PGOV PREF IT
SUBJECT: NO MORE MR. NICE GUY (I): INEFFECTIVE ITALIAN 
RESPONSE TO IMMIGRATION CHALLENGES 
 
ROME 00000437  001.2 OF 003 
 
Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Elizabeth L. Dibble for reasons 1.4 (b 
) and (d). 
 
Summary 
-------- 
 
¶1. (SBU)  Recent tragic reports of boatloads of African 
immigrants crossing from Libya to Lampedusa, a 12 square mile 
island off of the coast of Sicily, have transfixed local, 
regional and international audiences.  The arrivals have 
accelerated a law and order approach to irregular immigration 
promised by Prime Minister Berlusconi during his election 
campaign in 2008 and distilled in the recent public promise 
to ""be mean to illegal immigrants"" by Interior Minister 
Maroni, a leader in the anti-immigration Northern League 
political party.  But forceful public diplomacy, new and 
reinvigorated bilateral repatriation agreements with source 
countries, outreach to the EU, extended detention of 
irregular immigrants and tough security legislation have 
failed to stop the flows of irregular immigrants.  The 
dramatic plight of the boat people, most of whom are 
undocumented, masks the fact that they constitute less than 
15 percent of total arrivals of irregular migrants (although 
there was a 75 percent surge in the number of immigrants 
arriving by boat in 2008 and the trend line in the first 
quarter of 2009 appears constant).  The majority of irregular 
immigrants present in Italy -- estimated to number up to 
650,000 but the number is likely even higher -- arrive by 
land, air or sea.  Arriving from non-EU countries, primarily 
Morocco, Albania, China, Ukraine and the Philippines, they 
have obtained visitors visas and overstay, encouraged by 
Italy's porous borders and history of ""regularizing"" illegal 
immigrants.  Although Italy successfully expelled some 25,000 
persons in 2008, a majority of expulsion orders are not 
executed because of a lack of resources; Italy has less than 
3,000 available beds for detention.  In addition to the 
irregular migrants from non-EU countries, Italy is a popular 
destination for migrants from Eastern European countries such 
as Romania and Bulgaria, whose citizens are able to move 
freely following EU accession in 2007. 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  Frustrated by the non-stop flow of migrants to and 
through Italy, government officials complain privately about 
Libya's complicity in the trafficking of refugees and the 
failure of the EU to do more to help the southern tier states 
cope with the problem.  They have mounted an aggressive 
diplomatic campaign with affected states to win their 
cooperation in limiting irregular flows to Italy, including 
hosting a conference April 16-17 for police chiefs of 72 
nations.  Although Interior Ministry officials have told the 
embassy that they believe there is little terrorist threat 
from irregular immigrants, and government statistics reveal 
an overall drop in crime in all major Italian cities in 2008, 
Prime Minister Berlusconi, Interior Minister Maroni, other 
senior officials, and the Italian press (of which Berlusconi 
controls a  majority) continuously hype a connection between 
crime and terrorism and illegal immigrants. Critics of the 
government's approach argue that Italy needs a comprehensive 
integration policy that acknowledges the demographic changes 
in Italian society -- an aging population, a declining birth 
rate and the presence of some four million foreign residents 
in a population of 60 million.  They argue that immigration 
should be treated as a resource, not a threat, and fear that 
scapegoating irregular immigrants will radicalize Italy's 
""second generation"" of legal migrants, including more than 
one million Muslim immigrants. 
 
¶3. (SBU)  This is the first in a series of three reporting 
cables on immigration in Italy.  This first reporting cable 
describes the current situation.  The second reports on the 
government's reaction to the immigration challenge.  The 
third examines concerns about the limitations of the 
government's approach and previews the outlook for the 
future. 
 
Current Situation: Rubbery Statistics 
 
ROME 00000437  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU)  Statistics.  In defining the immigration picture in 
Italy, government and NGO statistics generally agree that in 
2008 Italy had 3, 433,000 resident legal immigrants out of a 
total population of 59,619,290 people.  In addition, there 
are 767,000 immigrant children under the age of 18.   Another 
250,000 persons have applied for legal status. (Note: 
According to Italy's citizenship law, a foreigner born in 
Italy cannot apply for citizenship until the age of 18.  A 
legal resident must wait ten years before applying for 
citizenship. Neither category is permitted to travel outside 
of Italy during these waiting periods.  On the other hand, 
foreigners who marry Italian citizens can acquire citizenship 
in a relatively straightforward process.  Given the overall 
difficulties in acquiring Italian citizenship, a significant 
number of legal immigrants are not citizens.  Rather they 
possess residence permits, typically tied to employment, 
issued by the government.  End note.)  Of these approximately 
four million legal immigrants, the charity Sant'Egidio 
estimates up to one million are EU residents, and the 
majority of these are Romanian.  Of the remaining three 
million legal residents from non-EU countries, approximately 
one million are Muslim.  The result is that there are almost 
7 foreigners in every 100 Italians, slightly over the EU 
average, although the ratio increases to 10 in Rome and 14 in 
Milan.  Since 1986, Italy has undertaken five 
""regularizations,"" granting more than one million residence 
permits to previously irregular migrants. Estimates of the 
current number of irregular immigrants range from half a 
million to 650,000 and higher, although no one knows for 
sure. 
 
¶5. (SBU)  Irregular labor market.  According to Caritas, a 
Catholic charity that provides government-funded support to 
immigrants, two-thirds of Italy's immigrants are working in 
Italy's industrialized north.  Most work in small firms.  The 
balance engage in family care throughout Italy and in 
seasonal agricultural work predominantly in the south.  The 
Italian research institute IMSU recently completed an 
in-depth survey of the immigration situation in the region of 
Lombardy, including Milan, which illustrates this employment 
picture.  In 2008, there were just over one million 
immigrants in Lombardy, a 13 percent increase since 2007. 
Half of this population is estimated to be irregular and 
these persons work in the following sectors:  14.6 percent as 
industry laborers; 13.1 percent as construction workers; 9.8 
percent in the restaurant/hotel industry; 7.1 percent as 
domestics on an hourly basis; and 6.5 percent as live-in 
domestics. 
 
¶6. (SBU)  Boat migrants.  One small slice of the illegal 
immigrant population is well-documented:  the approximately 
15 percent who make their way from Africa across the 
Mediterranean in flimsy and overcrowded boats.  The IOM 
registered the arrival of 31,236 persons by boat to Lampedusa 
in 2008.  The Interior Ministry records a total number of 36, 
951 persons arriving by boat to the southern Italian regions 
of Apulia, Sardinia, Sicily (including Lampedusa) and 
Calabria in 2008.  By contrast the number of persons arriving 
by boat recorded by the Interior Ministry in 2007 was 20,455 
-- a 75 percent increase from one year to the next. 
According to the IOM, the major source countries of the 
arrivals in Lampedusa in 2008 were Tunisia (6,799), Nigeria 
(6,070), Somalia (4,106), Eritrea (3,374), Morocco (2,032), 
Ghana (1,802), and Palestine (833).  Significantly, the 
number of Tunisians arriving in Lampedusa jumped by nearly 
six thousand persons in 2008.  According to UNHCR, 31,200 
persons requested asylum in Italy in 2008; some 8,000 were 
granted asylum.  This represents an almost 30 percent 
increase in asylum requests since 2005. 
 
¶7. (C)  Sea crossing.  Nearly all of the persons arriving by 
boat in Lampedusa departed from Libya.  NGOs who work with 
immigrants report that traffickers tell the boat migrants to 
head for an ENI oil rig platform.  Upon arrival at the 
 
ROME 00000437  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
platform, they are told to head due north to Lampedusa.  Each 
year 120,000 persons out of 450,000 immigrants to Europe are 
estimated to cross the Mediterranean by boat, and no one 
knows for sure how many die in the attempt.  In the first 
quarter of 2009, hundreds of refugees have continued to 
arrive by boat each week in Lampedusa.  Although all states 
are required under international law to render assistance to 
refugees in distress, there is a presumption in Italy that 
the Italian border police undertake the lion's share of the 
response to distress calls, a perception shared by NGOs.  One 
former member of the Carabinieri who worked for Interpol told 
us that when FRONTEX, the EU border control agency, receives 
reports of boats in distress, all governments in the region 
are notified, but only the Italians regularly take active 
steps to rescue the migrants.  During a visit to Malta in 
February, a member of the Armed Forces of Malta told us the 
AFM responds to distress calls within its limited capacity, 
but admitted if the boat is deemed seaworthy the AFM points 
the migrants toward Lampedusa. 
 
¶8. (C)  Overstayers.  Government and NGO officials tell us, 
however, that the majority of irregular immigrants enter 
Italy with a visa and then overstay.  Italian border police 
chief Rodolfo Ronconi asserted that 57 percent of immigrants 
who enter Italy with a visa overstay.  Most arrive through 
the land border in the northeast but also through air and sea 
ports.  Vincenzo Delicato, a senior director of the National 
Police, told us that these illegal immigrants are primarily 
from Morocco, Albania, China, Ukraine and the Philippines. 
He explained that the border police do not screen EU 
residents and conduct only spot checks on non-EU residents. 
Interior Ministry statistics for 2008 record 70,625 
""stranieri rintracciati"" (or ""tracked foreigners,"" an 
implicit acknowledgement of a population of untracked 
foreigners), of whom only 24,234 were repatriated.  The 
remaining 46,931 were considered not in compliance with 
expulsion orders.  The 2007 statistics are comparable.  Other 
government statistics indicate that only 20 percent of 
illegal immigrants subject to an expulsion order are actually 
repatriated.  For example, in Milan in 2007, only 653 persons 
out of 3,088 subject to an expulsion order were in fact 
repatriated. 
 
¶9. (C)  Insufficient capacity.  There are several 
explanations for this large presence of irregular immigrants. 
 First, according to the vice president of immigration for 
Caritas, Le Quyen Ngo Dinh, ""Italy does not really know how 
they arrive and how many they are,"" meaning that most 
visitors are not subject to border control or judicial 
review.  Second, for those who come into contact with the 
state and are judged as irregular, Italy has limited 
detention space: nationwide there are 10 centers of 
identification and expulsion, with a capacity of fewer than 
3,000 beds, and a handful of ""welcome"" centers near southern 
Italian seaports to screen immigrants arriving by boat.  The 
result is that Italy cannot detain all those subject to 
expulsion order, which means many of them simply fail to 
comply.  Moreover, some of those expelled return, gambling 
correctly that they can again slip through Italy's porous 
borders, including 1,500 miles of coastline.  Third, many 
governments of source countries refuse to cooperate with 
Italian authorities in identifying undocumented immigrants. 
These individuals can still be subject to expulsion orders 
but cannot be repatriated without an identity. 
Fundamentally, argues Ngo Dinh, Italy lacks the structural 
capacity to manage the large numbers of illegal migrants to 
the country.  As Paolo Ciani, who helps immigrants for the 
Italian charity Sant'Egidio, said simply: ""Not only is the 
government policy (dealing with immigrants) morally wrong, 
it's ineffective."" 
 
DIBBLE 
"