Migrants, the front of the mayors: “Worried about reception, no to the cancellation of special protection”

«As Mayors, as Administrators, as citizens who engage in the territories on a daily basis to try to guarantee the best answers to the critical issues that our Communities express, we are very concerned about the proposals under discussion relating to changes to the only truly public migrant reception system , structured, non-emergency that we have in Italy ». Thus begins a joint document by the mayors of Rome, Milan, Naples, Turin, Bologna and Florence. “The concern of cities is greatest in the face of amendments proposed by some parties to Legislative Decree 591 after the many evidences that our legal system has had to remedy in recent years – write Gualtieri, Sala, Manfredi, Lo Russo, Lepore and Nardella – we need to think from an emergency point of view and in our opinion it is wrong to imagine the exclusion of asylum seekers from the SAI, precluding them from any path of integration and a real possibility of inclusion and emancipation in our communities”.
The document continues as follows: «We do not agree with the cancellation of special protection, a measure present in almost all Western European countries, while around 50% of migrants present vulnerabilities and are largely made up of families. These choices, if adopted, could only lead to constant damage to individual rights and innumerable difficulties that our communities have already had to face in recent years, in the face of a significant increase in foreign citizens condemned precisely to invisibility. All this while the CAS system, which has never emerged from an emergency structure, is saturated and unfortunately inadequate to welcome those coming from the flows of the Mediterranean route as well as from the Balkan route. Insufficient, both in numbers and in the reception methods and in the absence of accompaniment, protection and inclusion services. And in this context, it is also necessary to rethink the reception system for unaccompanied foreign minors to which it is necessary to apply distribution logics that avoid concentration only in large cities.
In fact, our cities are already committed today, often with efforts beyond their limits and frequently beyond their functions and competences, to remedy the shortcomings of an adequate national system with their own resources.
The suppression of the possibility of building a single public, transparent and professional reception system (such as the SAI), guaranteeing dignified and protective pathways also for people seeking international protection, cannot lead to the creation of new large reception or detention centers in our territories. The history of the last twenty years of reception in Italy clearly demonstrates how emergency models, with minimum quality standards and aimed at mere “board and lodging” have caused enormous wounds in our communities and have not guaranteed the rights demanded by the refugee population. And above all, effective and lasting inclusion processes have failed».
For these reasons, the mayors propose four points:
1. that the unity of the Italian Reception System be strengthened, enhancing the virtuous experience of the SAI, or by actively supporting the network of Municipalities that face the challenges that incoming migratory movements present to our services, our territories and our communities on a daily basis. With only one goal: to guarantee paths of effective inclusion and protection compatible with the territories, avoiding large reception centres, without services and without protection, for everyone.
2. Sai remains accessible to protection seekers and refugees.
3. the Cas are transformed into first reception hubsdedicated to identification and health screening procedures to then proceed to rapid transfers to the second reception and inclusion system, precisely the SAI.
4. the allocation criteria that the National Reception Plan had indicated are restored.
«In the absence of targeted positive actions or, worse, with wrong actions, the repercussions will in fact be widespread irregularity or long courses of judicial appeals that will paralyze the lives of many people, disabling them and making them easy prey to illegal work, which instead is not lacking – they write -. Finally, as local administrations, we hope that once again Italy will not be characterized by a regression relating to the reception system for asylum seekers and refugees: for too many years this issue has needed an important and structural reform, which aims at a national balance of the reception system which is essential from the involvement of the Municipalities and from the objectives of inclusion, protection and with a homogeneous diffusion at national level. We are convinced, together with other authoritative voices, that after about twenty years and also in the light of some issues of structural demographic and social change we should not continue to talk about an emergency and that right now we need the foresight to open a discussion to choosing a legal path to immigration and the regularization of immigrants already present in Italy, also through recourse to the ius scholae, a premise to supportive communities, capable of proposing paths of true emancipation and autonomy to people in the full interest of our country”.