The registered immigrant population in Italy has shown a constant increase of around 50,000–70,000 per annum during the 1990s. Whilst the increase itself has been steady, the representation of nationalities of the new entrants has changed. In 1997, the largest regional proportion (39 percent) consisted of European nationals. Africa accounted for the second largest regional grouping with 28 percent, followed by Asia, with 18 percent.

Residence permits issued to Albanians in 1997 (see Table 3) show that the 8,662 people who entered Italy for ‘extraordinary reasons’ following the political crisis in Albania in March of that year, represent more than 50 percent of the total number of Albanians who entered Italy legally that year and 97 percent of all entries for ‘extraordinary reasons’.

Comparative estimates for immigrants without residence permits are available for the year 1994, and range from the lowest – 268,000, made by the CGIL trade union – to the highest – 1,500,000, made by the business association Confcommercio. In between lie the estimates of Caritas (300,000–500,000) and the National Statistics Institute – ISTAT (669,500).²⁰ Numbers differ significantly due to the clandestine component, which is extremely difficult to quantify.

The latest available estimates²¹ put the proportion of irregular immigrants no higher than 25 percent of the number of legal immigrants; in other words, there is supposedly one foreigner with irregular status for every four immigrants with regular permits. This seems consistent with the estimates of the Ministry of the Interior (April 1998), as shown in Table 4 below.

For the purposes of more detailed analysis, it is appropriate to distinguish between irregular immigrants and clandestine persons, both of which are components of illegal immigration flows. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the main source of irregular immigration is persons who enter Italy with regular tourist visas but actually intend to remain in the country.. Thus, irregular immigrants are those whose residence permits have expired and have not been renewed. It has been estimated that the proportion of expired residence permits was 30 percent in 1991, 46 percent in 1992, 41 percent in 1993 and approximately 33 percent in 1994.²²

Successive Italian governments have introduced legislative measures dealing with immigration over the last fifteen years, including three partial amnesties. Law 943 of 1986, covering non-EU nationals only, permitted 118,709 individuals to legalise their status. Law 39 of 1990 (the so-called legge Martelli) was aimed at all nationalities, and resulted in the issue of 215,851 new residence permits. Decree law 489 of 1995 (the so-called decreto Dini), and Law 617 approved the following year, resulted in 258,761 requests for residence permits: 227,272 permits were issued, 28,752 requests were considered pending.²³ Of the 147,479 permits recorded by the Employment Office for working reasons at the end of February 1997, 96.5 percent were issued to immigrants sponsored by employers who confirmed their working status; only 3.5 percent were issued to newly employed immigrants.²⁴

By definition, this category of irregular immigration cannot be charged with a high degree of accuracy. It is possible, however, to quantify approximately the clandestine component of illegal immigration, starting from data drawn from border police operations.²⁵

Estimates of clandestine Albanian immigration vary considerably, as a result of the history of asylum seekers from that country. In 1991, there was a sharp increase in the number of Albanian arrivals (see Table 1); most sources put the total around 40–50,000, half of whom were either repatriated or became clandestine.

The state prosecutor of Brindisi, Nicola Piacente,²⁶ stated that until the Albanian crisis of March 1997, when patrols along the Italian coastline were stepped up, approximately 30 illegal immigrants would disembark on the Brindisi coast per night on an average of 200 nights per year. This would imply an annual influx of around 6,000 illegal immigrants per year. To this total he added an estimate of those arriving by the normal sea routes but with forged passports (some 50 clandestine immigrants were caught travelling in this way on the Durres-Brindisi route each month, but they probably represented only a tenth of those who slipped through the net), thus bringing the total to 12,000 per annum. A realistic estimate of clandestine Albanian arrivals along the entire Adriatic shoreline could therefore be around 15,000 per year for the period from late 1991 to early 1997, of whom perhaps half subsequently crossed from Italy into other West European countries or returned home..

As in all EU countries, Italian government actions against illegal immigration include internal controls – directed towards foreign persons who are already in the country – and controls of irregular or clandestine would be-entrants at the country’s borders.

While some authors have severely criticised the effectiveness of external control measures,³⁰ others have highlighted the improvements made in the last decade.³¹ As shown in Table 5 below, Albanian would-be entrants have been turned back at the country’s border in a steady progression since 1992, after the peak reached during the so-called ‘invasion of boat people’ in 1991. Albanians also have the highest share of clandestine would-be entrants intercepted during border patrol operations before they reach the border.

According to press reports based on data from the Ministry of the Interior, 42,877 would-be entrants were turned back during the first nine months of 1998, including 4,211 Albanians.

Articles 9 and 49 of Law 40/1998 clearly state that would-be entrants must be turned back more effectively at the country’s borders. According to the law, procedures must be modernised, basically by introducing computer systems to gain access to international databases. Moreover, it calls for coordination among the different authorities in charge of external controls (customs officers, border police, the Coast Guard, the Navy), especially along the coast.

Law 40/1998 also introduces significant changes with regard to internal controls: foreign nationals who have entered illegally, who do not request a regular permit within a set period of time, or whose regular permit has expired and has not been renewed are all subject to deportation. Whenever immediate deportation is not possible, these foreigners are obliged to enter ‘temporary residence centres’, where they are supposed to stay no more than 30 days, giving authorities a chance to identify them and contact their country of origin. Looking at Table 7 below, the most striking fact is the low proportion of deportation orders executed relative to the high number delivered. One major reason for this was the two-week interval between the issuing of a deportation order and its enforcement – a feature of the previous law – which had the effect of allowing those facing deportation simply to ‘disappear’.

The mechanism of ‘temporary residence’ under surveillance, introduced by the new legislative provisions, may represent an improvement. The cooperation of authorities in the country of origin is encouraged by the possibility of bilateral agreements to give priority status to citizens who, once repatriated, would like to apply for work visas.³² In application to the new legislative provisions, a quota of 38,000 work permits has been established for 1998.³³ Starting from 1999, it will also be possible for residents, immigrants or organisations to ‘sponsor’ visas to immigrants requiring work permits before they come to Italy on the basis of planned yearly quotas and bilateral agreements (Articles 3 and 19). In doing so, a precise political distinction is drawn between migrants who are seeking refuge for humanitarian reasons – for whom emergency solutions must be found – and migrants who are looking for a job – for whom it is necessary to plan yearly intake quotas.³⁴

The official position on this crucial question is quite straightforward: ‘The era of easy entries into Italy is now over. The present government has turned over a new leaf’, declared Prime Minister Romano Prodi in August 1998, echoed by Minister of the Interior Giorgio Napolitano, who stated: ‘Obviously we cannot repatriate illegal immigrants manu militari. However, we are determined to send out a message of firm discouragement to all those who are thinking of leaving their country for a journey with no chance of success; moreover, we are committed to ensuring the defence of EU borders, and fighting the shameful trafficking of human beings’.³⁵

According to Caritas’ updated statistics for 1997, the geographic distribution of the total immigrant population in Italy is 51.3 percent in the north of the country, 30.5 percent in the centre, and 18.1 percent in the south and on the islands. Lombardy ranks first with 250,400 immigrants, followed by Latium with 232,611; but if we single out cities, Rome still has the highest number of immigrants: 211,200 from non-EU countries, compared to 182,011 in Milan.³⁶

Estimates for the numbers of illegal as compared to legal non-EU immigrants are available for some cities and provinces.³⁷ The striking feature of these figures is the difference between northern and southern Italy in the total number of regular immigrants in relation to the estimated number of irregulars: whereas in Caserta and Latina illegal immigrants are thought to outnumber regulars by three to one, in the northern province of Bolzano, irregulars are thought to make up only one-tenth of the legal immigrant population.

According to Employment Office data for 1997, of 8,449 non-EU nationals with entry permits granted for agricultural work, 8,114 – or almost all – were issued in the north. More in general, 79.0 percent of the 20,739 immigrants who entered Italy with valid permits in the various working sectors were employed in the north. ³⁸

In 1994, regional Employment Inspectorates examined the status of employees in over 32,000 companies in 1994. The average proportion of non-EU workers was 2.2 percent of the total workforce. Of them, 28 percent were either without a residence permit altogether, or else the permit had expired. The region of Apulia had the highest rates of ‘irregular’ workers (65.7 percent), followed by Lombardy (59.5 percent) and Campania (40.9 percent).³⁹

In March 1996, new laws allowed illegal or irregular immigrants to legalise their situation and qualify for residence permits (see 2.2). According to Caritas,⁴⁰ at the end of a four-month period, sponsoring employers had asked for the legalisation of the status of 111,671 immigrant workers at the appropriate labour offices, of which 64.7 percent were in the north, 12 percent in the centre, 22 percent in the south and 1.2 percent on the islands. Surprisingly, the region of Latium was in tenth place, while the highest proportion of newly registered immigrant labour was in Lombardy, followed by Campania. The largest employment categories were domestic help (38.3 percent), industry (23.2 percent) – almost entirely in the north and centre – and agriculture (12.5 percent) – of which a third in the south and islands. In terms of nationality, Moroccan nationals topped the list with 19,368 work contracts (17.3 percent of the total), followed by Albanians (15,346: 13.7 percent) and Filipinos (13,135: 11.8 percent).

Such data must, however, be interpreted with some caution. Many ‘domestic’ workers are, in fact, employed in industry but, as warned by Caritas, registered by employers as domestic help because it is the category for which they pay the lowest state contributions. Furthermore, many of the short-term contracts are abruptly terminated or not renewed, causing the immigrants to become ‘irregular’ once again.

Moreover, the low share of immigrants in the south may not reflect the true situation, it merely being that, as far as immigration is concerned, regulars live in the north, where employment possibilities are better with a residence permit, while irregular/illegal immigrants stay in the south, where there are fewer regular jobs but informal or irregular work is easier to obtain.

²⁰Eurispes – Istituto di Studi Politici,Economici e Sociali, Rapporto Italia 1996, ed. Koinè, Roma, 1996, p. 700. Henceforth referred as Eurispes 1996.

²¹Caritas 1998, op. cit.

²²Fondazione Cariplo per le Iniziative e lo Studio sulla Multietnicità (ISMU) Primo Rapporto sulle Migrazioni, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1995, pp. 40–41; ISTAT, Rapporto Annuale 1994, June 1995, p. 197–99; both quoted in Palidda, S., ‘La Construction Sociale de la Déviance et de la Criminalité parmi les Immigrés: Le Cas Italien’, Immigrant Delinquency, Cost A2, Social Sciences, European Commission EUR17472 FR/EN, 1996, p. 233, footnote 177. Henceforth referred to as Palidda, S., in Cost.

²³Caritas 1997, op. cit., p. 115.

²⁴Ministero dell’Interno, Rapporto Annuale sul Fenomeno della Criminalità Organizzata per il 1995, Roma, June 1996. Henceforth referred to as Ministero dell'Interno 1996.

²⁵These data are only partly reliable: since there are different authorities in charge of external controls, numbers of intercepted clandestine immigrants may be overlapping.

²⁶Interviewed in Narcomafie, July–August 1995, Gruppo Abele, Torino.

²⁷La Stampa, 19 August 1997.

²⁸Fondazione Cariplo – ISMU, Terzo Rapporto sulle Migrazioni 1997, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1998. Henceforth referred to as ISMU 1998.

³⁰Bolaffi, G., Una Politica per gli Immigrati, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1996.

³¹Sciortino, G., ‘Le Politiche di Controllo in Europa e in Italia’, in ISMU 1998, op. cit., pp. 71–88.

³³Planning Document on Immigration Policy, 1998, op. cit.

³⁴La Repubblica, 21 July 1998.

⁴⁰Il Manifesto, 23 August 1996, on Internet location http://www.oss_imm.htm