How Italians deal with immigrants

immigrantcenter Cie, Cara, CdA: Italian symbols behind which are hidden dramatic stories of survival of many illegal immigrants who, every day, arrive in Italy looking for a better way beyond their borders. The detention centers should "accept" or "identify" immigrants. But usually they become prisons from which people get out devastated. Not healthcare, not legal support, inadequate social and psychological support, without any kind of services, small spaces in which to live. This is what Medecins Sans Frontieres saw visiting Italian centers for migrants.

Five years after the previous investigation, Medecins Sans Frontieres is back in detention centers for immigrants without a residence permit and without transit permit for asylum seekers. Nothing has changed, though, and there are no prospects for something better because, today, the approach used is the "emergency". In the centers visited there was no protection of fundamental rights and it was something usual. And for two of these places, the Cie of Trapani and Lamezia Terme, the humanitarian organization ask to close them. These because they would be totally inadequate to keep people "in a human way". They usually become real "detention centers".
They turn into prisons where self-harm incidents, riots and fights happens every day, where even the basic necessities are lacking. Those discouraging data are written on the report "Beyond the Wall. Travel to centers for migrants in Italy ", made by Medecins Sans Frontieres after visiting, between 2008 and 2009, twenty-one among identification and deportation centers (ICE), service asylum seekers centers (Cara) and detention centers (CDA). They found some improvement over the 2003 visit, but basically the status of "temporarily detained" is not improved. "There are still many doubts about the health care provided, that gives only basic, symptomatic and short term care - said Alessandra Tramontano, MSF medical coordinator - We are surprised of the lack of health protocols for the diagnosis and treatment of infectious and chronic diseases. "
The survey was made in a totally different way from that of 2003. This because in the meanwhile it has entered into force the security law, with long delays in detention in Cie from 2 to 6 months.
One more element that has worsened the situation, with more and more people trapped in spaces originally planned for numbers much lower. If at first the function of administrative detention was only a temporary restriction of freedom to implement the expulsion of illegal immigration, now becomes a real punishment.

The first centers for migrants, the CIE (Identification and Deportation Centers) were established with the entry into force of the Turco-Napolitano law in 1998, but in the meantime things have changed and the structures, however, were not adequate. In these centers, where often 40% are people who come from prison and has not even been identified, there are often acts of violence. It should not surprise us, however, because foreigners are detained for up to 180 days in impossible human conditions. Then there are the CDA (Reception Center) established in 1995, where are transferred all newly arrived immigrants in Italy. Here they should receive first aid and reception but the law does not define how long migrants can stay in these centers, speaking only of "strictly necessary".
Most recent are the CPSA (First Aid and Home Centers) established in 2006 to accept (for an average of 48 hours) migrants rescued at sea before moving into CDA. And finally, the CARA (reception centers for asylum seekers) established by Decree Law 25/2008 where are sent foreigners seeking asylum but have no identification documents. In these centers, the report said, those situations are problematic, especially in Crotone and Foggia where Medecins Sans Frontieres found "12 people living in dilapidated container of 25 or 30 square feet, several hundred meters away from the services and other facilities of the center. "
From the Ministry of the Interior, through the replication of the Prefect Mario Morcone, they say that "all this does not correspond to truth", it's an "all ideological" position of MSF and the centers are opened for "visits and inspections of political authorities, institutions and journalists so anyone can be sure of the actual conditions of reception and hospitality."
Just what Medecines Sans Frontieres has done, seeing at first hand a situation far removed from the words of the ministry. Italian politics, however, won't face these problems. There are more important laws to be approved, now.