Why the Bossi-Fini law must be changed, point by point – Corriere.it

In the debate on immigration (re) ignited by the Cutro massacre (February 26, 80 confirmed dead, including 33 children), he suddenly entered an old ghostor better a political totem on which the Italian centre-right has built an important part of its identity: the Bossi-Fini law
. By now there was so little talk about it – despite the omnipresence of the question in political discourse and in electoral campaigns – as to give the idea that it was outdated in the strict sense: by other norms, and not only by events. Until, after Cutro, it was an influential politician who exhumed her, perhaps the most influential of all after the premier: her close adviser Alfredo Mantovano
. But the exhumation served the undersecretary to the Prime Minister to say that the next step must be a definitive burial, an overall redesign of the legislation on migrants that delivers the Bossi-Fini to history. Immediately afterwards, Mantovano’s opinion received the validation – symbolic, but precisely for this reason – of Gianfranco Finiwho is not only one of the fathers of the law, but increasingly proposes himself as one of the noble fathers of melonism, whose sorties must therefore be noted to understand the possible evolution of the Italian righton the implicit impulse of its undisputed leader.

So let’s try to understand the question, point by point:

• What is the Bossi-Fini law?

• the law number 189 of 2002, which from 30 July of that year regulates immigration in Italy. It is named after the two politicians who were at that stage Silvio Berlusconi’s main allies in his second government
  one leader of the National Alliance and vice-president of the Council, the other leader of the Lega (then Lega Nord and not Lega for Salvini premier as he is now called) and Minister for Reforms: whether they were the ones to sign it the idea of ​​the symbolic value
  that the center-right gave the measure right from the start. This in turn makes us understand both the extent of the attempt underway to change it, and that of the resistance already expressed or foreseeable, in particular by the Northern League. The law replaced the Turco-Napolitano of 1998and also this symbolic: the law of the right on migrants instead of that of the left.

• What does Bossi-Fini foresee?

  The main points were — are — these:

  1) Expulsions with accompaniment to the border
  : irregular immigrants – i.e. without a residence permit and valid identity document – must be expelled by administrative means and accompanied to the border. If he doesn’t have a valid document, he ends up in a detention center, those that with the Turco-Napolitano, which instituted them, were called Centers for temporary stay and assistance (Cpt) and then they became There is (Identification and Expulsion Centers) and are now i Cpr (Repatriation detention centres).

  2) Residence permit linked to actual work
  . the norm that, according to most observers, it represents the major tare of the Bossi-Finithe one to which we owe the failure of Italian migration policies in these twenty years. Immigrants can enter only if they already have an employment contract, on which the release of the residence permit for up to two years depends. a mechanism that has had no comparison with reality: an employer should hire a stranger.

  3) Refoulements in extraterritorial waters and crime of aiding and abetting
  . The goal was to prevent migrants from landing in Italy, having them identified directly at sea by the police to verify who had the right to asylum and who needed treatment, immediately rejecting the others thanks to bilateral agreements with the countries of origin. The migratory mass then evaded this network of controls, whose holes, in a reality like the sea, are inevitably large. As for aiding and abetting illegal immigration, he is punished with sentences of up to three years and fines of 15,000 euros for each migrant landed. the rule that in the following years was used to try to stop the relief activity of the NGOs.

• What did Mantovano say?

  Interviewed by La Stampa on Saturday, the exponent of the Brothers of Italy – who twenty years ago, as undersecretary of the Interior, contributed a lot to the Bossi-Fini text – said that now become a harlequin-law. We must do something new, but calmly and articulately
  . The time factor has been carefully emphasized by Mantovano: One thing is an urgent decree, another to put things right to the entire immigration law which has now had its day
  , been patched up I don’t know how many times, there are articles bis, ter, quater. As if to say that the prime minister’s main collaborator has taken into account a difficult debate within the coalition. As for Fini, he agreed with Mantovano with these words: The law must be changed because the origin of the migratory phenomenon has changed profoundly. Today it has global dimensions and is increasingly related to the moral duty
  in addition to theinternational obligationto guarantee right of asylum for those fleeing war, risks of genocide, natural disasters, mass violations of fundamental human rights. Very different tones and accents from those recurrent in the Italian right in recent years.

• What doesn’t work with Bossi-Fini?

  The macroscopic data the simulacrum of the remote meeting between the demand of an Italian employer and the offer of a foreign worker who is living abroad and who that employer has never met. This fiction drags on up to today, up to the latest flow decree, launched at the end of December by the Meloni government, which provides for the preliminary checkby the employer. What is it about? Of the obligation for the employer who presents an application for the employment of a foreign worker of demonstrate that you have first of all looked for an Italian worker and not found it. a rule that obliges the employer to a long bureaucratic process before the click day, scheduled for March 27th. Hence, the fiction. So summed up by Domenico Affinito and Milena Gabanelli in the latest Dataroom: Now, which employer hires a person who has never seen and without even knowing when he will be able to arrive? it is evident that he is dealing with an irregular already in Italy: and the “flow decree” thus conceived only a disguised adjustment.

• What are the hypotheses for reform?

  From the reformist right to Mantovano they have not yet been specified. But it is not a gamble to hypothesize that they will not be too dissimilar from those that the associations most involved in the sector have been advancing for years, and which necessarily gravitate around the left and social Catholicism. The most specific and articulated proposal is that of the I was a foreigner campaign, promoted among others by Radicali Italiani, A Buon diritto, ActionAid Italia, Asgi (Association for legal studies on immigration), Centro Astalli, Federation of Evangelical Churches, Oxfam, Acli and Arch. It’s a real one popular initiative bill and, in summary, provides:

  1) Reintroduction of the sponsor system
  the mechanism originally envisaged by the Turco-Napolitano law, for the entry into the labor market of the foreign citizen at the invitation of the Italian employer. The promoters explain: It is a guarantee service for access by individual employers which allows the foreign worker to come to Italy, be hired and enter the job market, ensuring adequate financial resources. But what would be the difference with the current fiction? The most obvious is that this assumption should happen at any time, without having to wait for click days to be set and defined specific sectors. it is therefore clear that it is a question of no longer pretending that there are no hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Italy most of whom have already had informal access to our labor market. The intent is evident in the next point.

  2) Regularization of settled foreigners on an individual basis
  In fact, the promoting associations propose the regularization on an individual basis of foreigners who find themselves in a situation of irregular stay when the existence of a working activity in Italy can be demonstrated, on the model of Spain and Germany. This residence permit should provide a procedure that is always accessible, on an individual basis, and not linked to amnesties: it can be done request permission at any time if you meet the requirements. The proposal does not neglect the heart of the migration issue: that is, foreigners who are not already here and they would like to come legallywithout risking drowning.

  3) Introduction of a temporary residence permit for job search Here is the legal channel that could compete with illegal trafficking. Permission would be 12 months and should be issued to workers from third countries to facilitate the meeting with Italian employers and to allow those who have been selected on the basis of requests from certain professional figures to come to Italy, carry out job interviews and finalize their hiring.

This proposal was endorsed by the Democratic Party and the Third Pole. This also a politically important clue on the new, possible coordinates of the opposition: on the issues that matter, it is said that the Pd-5 Star axis is the prevailing one, even with the election of
Elly Schlein as Democratic secretary. But obviously the center-right movements count above all. Meloni certainly cannot leave the banner of border defense to Salvini and he was keen to underline this to Cutro. But it is clear that Mantovano has a mandate to explore the reformist ways that the premier cannot (yet) make her name in the first person. the undersecretary, not surprisingly, to have theorized the need to introduce the flow decree from the current 83,000 seats to 500,000

which another iron Melon spoke about in recent days, the Minister of Agriculture Lollobrigida. This vein – which is the vein that currently governs Italy – seems to have gained awareness of taint of the Bossi-Fini lawwhich we summarize in conclusion.

• Bankruptcy numbers

  In twenty years he has regulated, seasonal aside, only 800,000 foreign workers
  to which must be added i two million who benefited from the amnesties. Does that mean that, from a right-wing point of view, it worked because it brought in few foreigners? For nothing: it means smuggled in many more
  which has facilitated illegal trafficking and which does not respond to the needs of the Italian society and economy.

• The farce of meeting strangers

  With the Bossi-Fini, the only way to legally enter Italy already have an employment contract. An absurdity, as we have seen, because it presupposes an encounter between an employer and a worker who do not know each other.

• Impossible regularization

  With this law, foreigners who already work in Italy, but in an irregular way, they can adjust just hoping for amnesty
  . Or with the simulation of returning home, of waiting to be called back by an employer who pretends not to know them already and demonstrates that he has no Italians available in their place, of the bureaucratic procedure for workers and for those who hire them, of the surreal race per click day. The mechanisms proposed by I was a stranger would instead allow the immediate emergence of a black person who is an integral part of the life of many families: a quarter of undocumented workers in Italy are domestic workers.

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