RADICAL REFORMS
Matteo Renzi cited the modification of the Bossi-Fini law as one of the issues that should be included in the coalition pact between the parties supporting the Letta government. We will have to wait to know in detail the proposals of the Secretary Pd to evaluate the quality. In the meantime, I try to outline the elements of a desirable reform, distinguishing between radical measures and corrective measures. I limit myself to the immigration rules, referring to a previous article for possible actions to be taken in the European asylum field.
Among the changes in the rules on foreigners, the two most radical concerns the acquisition of citizenship(today regulated by the law 91/1992) and immigration for work. On the first point, the House’s constitutional affairs committee has been debating for months and an agreement is certainly at hand, on condition that no parliamentary group claims to have exclusive merit. No one thinks about introducing an absolute ius soli (Italian citizen is born in Italy), but rather a tempered ius soli (Italian citizen who is born in Italy as a parent, foreigner or community, legally residing indefinitely) or the so-called ius culturae(the foreigner acquires Italian citizenship who completes one or more education cycles in Italy).
Of the two possibilities, the latter is certainly the most important, because it emphasizes the socio-cultural insertion of the exponents of the second generation, rather than a merely bureaucratic requirement. The fact, feared by some ministerial circles, that from the acquisition of citizenship by the child would result in the inexplicability of the parent should not be seen as a circumvention of the restrictive rules on immigration, but rather as the deserved goal of the desire for integration of the ‘whole family unit.
Regarding immigration for work, it is a matter of translating into norms what everyone knows: [tweetability] work relationships with low qualifications do not constitute “at a distance”, but require a direct meeting [/ tweetability], on the spot, between demand and supply. It means allowing entry for job search, which is already possible, without any limit and without negative consequences for our society, for community workers. For third country workers, numerical limits could be introduced and, in order to cope with possible failures of individual migratory adventures, appropriate corrections when issuing an entry visa:
registration of fingerprints and a copy of the passport, for an identification immediate foreigner; and the tied deposit (by the interested party or a guarantor) of an amount of sufficient resources to support the worker for the period of job search and for any return journey. A reform of this kind is simply to give legal status and controllability to the actual way in which foreigners enter the Italian labor market. But the fact that the current rules, which impose the establishment of a work contract before entry into Italy, have resisted for twenty-seven years is a sign that politicians are terrified by the idea of changing them. If the terror persists, a good step forward could consist of one experimentation :
under certain conditions, the entry of a small contingent of foreign workers in search of work is authorized, if the insertion path is monitored, the effectiveness of the possible measures to support their insertion and those of control is evaluated. ; then the experiment is repeated with the appropriate modification of the conditions that have proved to be inadequate. Incidentally: if the experiment had been put in place during the North Africa emergency for the benefit of the people accepted, the enormous amount of money spent in that context would have found a more solid justification.
