Rome, 21 July (AKI) - Italy on Friday issued 350,000 new residency permits for immigrants in addition to the 170,000 granted in March to foreigners residing irregularly in the country. Social solidarity minister Paolo Ferraro said the measure was aimed at granting permits to all those who applied five months ago. Then some 520,000 foreigners applied for residency Ferraro said. "This decree fills the gap between the applications presented and those accepted," the minister said. The decree will become effective in September.
02 Under Italy's 2002 Bossi-Fini immigration law, which was drafted by the previous centre-right government to crack down on illegal immigration, the government establishes every year a quota of new immigrants it can admit in the country according to labour market needs.
03 Right after he was sworn in as Italy's new social solidarity minister in May, Ferrero vowed he would change Italy's strict immigration laws and that all foreigners with a job in Italy would be granted a residency permit. (and, of course, those jobs would include phony ones -dolph.)
04 On Friday, interior minister Giuliano Amato said Italy's immigration laws needed to be changed.
05 "We are applying the law as it is but we are considering how to change the system so as to have laws that really work," Amato said.
06 The minister slammed the current system as "hypocritical" as it grants permits to immigrants already residing and working in Italy under the pretence that they are abroad. In order for their applications to be accepted, foreigners need to prove that someone is ready to employ them and provide housing.
07 Overall, exact estimates on the number of illegal immigrants currently living and working in Italy are impossible, according to Catholic charity Caritas, which presents an annual report on immigration.
08 Researchers with the the think-tank IDOS, which carried out a research on behalf of Caritas released last month, cited estimates ranging from 500,000 non-EU citizens currently living illegally in the country (according to Milan-based think tank ISMU), to the 600,000 mentioned by Italy's three largest labour unions CGIL, CISL and UIL, to the 800,000 according to research institute Eurispes, which publishes an annual report on immigration. Legal immigrants in Italy are approximately 2.7 million.
09 Inspections by public officials carried out last year on 24,555 companies nationwide showed that one in four non-EU citizens employed did not have a regular contract and that 13 percent of them did not have a residence permit.
10 Many illegal immigrants are employed in seasonal jobs in the agricultural sector, mostly in Italy's poor south where the 'black economy' is particularly significant. In the industrialized centre and north, immigrants without a residency permit are instead mostly employed with illegal contracts and underpaid.

http://www.acage.org/news/?day=07212006&id=0007