rfmcdonald | [BRIEF NOTE] Early 21st Century Immigration into Italy (Reply)

From the article "Pro-immigration policy changing face of Italian cities," in The Straits Times:

Once a stopover for migrants headed to wealthier northern nations, Italy is now the destination. It formerly resisted accepting foreigners but is now a welcoming host.

The number of residency permits granted last year exploded to 630,000, almost triple that of 2002, according to Interior Ministry statistics.

The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi decided that regularising the status of immigrants helps fulfil the needs of employers.

The programme was supposed to be accompanied by a crackdown on illegals but few have been deported.

The other notable trend is that newcomers from such countries as Romania, Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria are beginning to statistically muscle out migrants from as far afield as Morocco, the Philippines, Tunisia and China, according to the Catholic relief agency Caritas.

'Italy is really experiencing an Eastern European phenomenon,' said Caritas official Lequyin Ngodhin.

'The situation in the East is gravely deteriorating. Countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine are far from joining the European Union. Their people aren't waiting. They're coming here to join first.'

Italy has also been issuing legalisation papers in increasing numbers, and observers note that the numbers of East European applicants for residence are rising faster than those of any other group.

Romanians now represent the largest single number of legal aliens in Italy, making up 10 per cent of Italy's 2.5 million legal immigrants.

Migration is changing the face of once-homogenous Italian cities.

Africans, Arabs, Slavs, Albanians, Filipinos and Chinese jostle one another on streets full of clothing vendors, fruit and vegetable stalls, souvenir hawkers, prostitutes and their pimps.

Two notes:

This article overlooks the fact that since the Second World War, northern Italy has been a major receiving area for immigrants, as millions of southern Italians settled in the industrial north.

Note that after the initial surge, the inflow of immigrants into Italy is not overwhelmingly Arab, or even mostly Muslim. If nothing else, it doesn't look like Muslims will "take over" Italy.