By ABC's Emma Alberici
Photo: A fishing boat from Tunisia in north Africa arrives on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa. (Antonio Parrinello: Reuters)
The numbers of people trying to reach Italy have more than doubled in the first half of this year. Like Australia, the debate is often heated but it's hard to remember a single occasion in recent times when any Italian politician has suggested that boats can be stopped, slowed or turned around, writes Emma Alberici.
It's peak time for maritime crossings in the Mediterranean. The sea is calm and warm but for migrants and refugees, it's also deadly.
This stretch of water claims more lives than any other in the world. In the past two years, more than 2,000 people have lost their lives trying to reach Europe from North Africa. Most of those who survive are taken to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa which is just 120 kilometres from Libya - closer to North Africa than it is to the Italian mainland. It's become the entry point to Europe for those fleeing their home countries by boat.
The numbers of people trying to reach Italy have more than doubled in the first half of this year (7,800) compared to January to June 2012 (3,500) but the death toll has fallen from to 40. Politicians and the church have welcomed that development and hailed the efforts of the Italian coastguard and customs police who are using military aircraft to identify vessels early and dispatch rescue crews more quickly. Last month, Pope Francis performed his first mass outside Rome in Lampedusa - an island just 20 square kilometres in size. Reading from a makeshift lectern built from the rudders of three fishing boats used to transport asylum seekers, the Pontiff decried the "globalisation of indifference" towards society's most vulnerable people.
"The culture of well-being makes us think about ourselves and renders us insensitive to the cries of others", he said.
He scattered flowers in to the water in memory of those who'd drowned on the journey to Italy and he called for leadership to show more compassion. Italy's centre-left prime minister Enrico Letta has promised more European cooperation while the political right's Erminio Boso from the Northern League told the Pope that if he was so concerned about refugees, he should provide church land to house immigrants.
The debate is often heated but it's hard to remember a single occasion in recent times when any politician from any of the multiple sides of the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate has suggested that boats can be stopped, slowed or turned around. In 2009, then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a €5billion deal with the former Libyan leader, Moamar Gaddafi to "stop the boats".
It worked but no explanation was ever given as to how that was achieved. It was recently reported that Mr Berlusconi asked Italy's secret services to assassinate the Libyan dictator so the then PM could end his increasingly embarrassing ties with Gaddafi. The request to Italy's spy chief Gianni De Gennaro was said by the left wing Italian daily, il Fatto Quotidiano, to have come in 2011 immediately before the NATO-backed uprising during which Colonel Gaddafi threatened to "flood Europe with refugees". During one weekend in the 2011 Arab spring, 7,500 people made it to the shores of Lampedusa overwhelming the local population of 5,000.
To placate anxious residents, Berlusconi, promised to build a casino and a golf course. He ordered the mayor to paint the houses pretty colours and plant more trees. In his ultimate show of solidarity for the people of Lampedusa, Mr Berlusconi bought a beach villa on the island. Presumably, his intention was not to personally house the arrivals.
Italians don't like the constant flow of arrivals on their coastline but they equally accept that politicians can do little to prevent them. There is a certain inevitability about asylum seekers in Europe stemming from its geography and its colonial history and there's no conversation in any media outlet or by any politician about "pull factors". The only lure is that of life in an advanced country even one facing its third year of recession, net government debt worth 110 per cent of GDP and double digit unemployment.
Thousands who came from Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 as "economic migrants" have now been sent home but most of the traffic comes from countries in sub-Saharan Africa particularly Somalia and Eritrea. They also come from Pakistan and Syria, Gambia, Mali and Afghanistan. Part of the problem for authorities in the EU is establishing how they arrived in Europe in the first place. Asylum seekers in Italy aren't locked up. This makes tracking their movements across borders almost impossible.
When they first disembark, they're taken to "Reception and Registration Centres" where their identification is checked. According to the Interior Ministry website, in 2011 there were 10 such centres in operation with 6,000 beds for those who opt to stay. They can come and go as they wish during the identification and application phase (maximum 35 days). They're not allowed to work while staying in a centre during the asylum procedure but if their case isn't decided within six months, they're entitled to a work permit in lieu of further accommodation. Social support in the form of food, shelter, language tuition and other integration measures are linked to the federal government's accommodation centres. After an asylum seeker leaves the centre, they receive no further assistance from authorities. When that initial six months expires, most asylum seekers become the responsibility of provincial authorities or NGOs. Thousands of failed asylum seekers are thought to be living rough in Italy's major cities. Many have crossed in to other EU countries and are living as illegal immigrants there. Thousands of those who have papers are living in slums relying on the charity of NGOs and generous locals. Without language or work skills, they have little prospects.
You don't have to look very hard in Italy's big cities to find the people who've escaped their home countries in search of a better life. In the summer months, they're selling everything from kids' toys, handbags, sunglasses and hats on the sides of the roads. Italian politicians don't distinguish between those who come by air and those who come by sea.
Even the extreme right Forza Nuova party bundles them all under the heading of "immigrati" (migrants) or "rifugiati" (refugees). They despise them all equally. Forza Nuova would prefer Italy took no foreigners at all. It's launched an internet campaign called "immigration kills" after recent murders allegedly committed by immigrants in Northern Italy. Most mainstream parties are currently engaged in a debate about granting automatic citizenship to any children born in Italy. On the whole it's been a fairly sensible debate save for the bunch of bananas thrown at the champion of the bill, Italy's first black minister, the recently appointed Integration Minister, Cecile Kyenge. She's a doctor born in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"It's a sad waste of food, considering the economic crisis," she wrote on Twitter. "The courage and optimism to change things has to come above all from the bottom up to reach the institutions," she added. Cecile Kyenge has become the focus of all those with a funk about foreigners. An online petition has been launched calling for the European Parliament to oust MP Mario Borghezio, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League after he claimed Kyenge would seek to "impose her tribal traditions from the Congo."
He also called the new Italian cabinet a "bonga bonga" government. Just a few weeks earlier, Roberto Calderoli, the vice president of the Senate and leader of the Northern League compared her to a primate. He told a rally, "when I see images of Kyenge I can't help think, even if I don't say she is one herself, of a resemblance to an orang-utan."
In Italy, they call Australia's "PNG Solution" the "Australian model". It refers to a system that shifts responsibility for immigrants to another country. A spokesman from one Italian NGO told me recently that the idea of moving asylum seekers to poorer countries in the EU is probably something Italy would consider ... if it had the money. In Lampedusa they're still waiting for Mr Berlusconi's new casino.
Emma Alberici is a host for ABC's Lateline program. View her full profile here.
Italy does not turn back the boats - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
