In response to Memorandum Prot. No. 53 P- dated Jan. 9, 2025 sent by the Prime Minister’s Office, the following is announced.

The observations and proposals in this contribution are the fruit of the requests of Third Sector entities that work in the field of immigration, reception of migrants, and the fight against human trafficking and that are part of the Asylum and Immigration Table. It is to be hoped that the consultations to the subject of this one will be carried out not only out of institutional duty, but will also be taken into consideration, because they bring back the testimony coming from that accredited and qualified Third Sector that every day is confronted with the effects of the decisions that government and Parliament take with respect to the condition of foreign persons in Italy and that go to affect the holding of that social protection that is increasingly lacking in this country.

Work entry programming and chronic under-allocation of quotas

The first consideration relates to the now anachronistic mechanism for programming inflows and allocating annual entry quotas provided by the Consolidated Immigration Act, which for years has been adopted as an exception to ordinary legislation. Therefore, it raises perplexity and concern that the use of exceptional programming, provided by DL 20/2023 for the years 2023-2025, has been extended to the three-year period 2026-2028 as well, instead of a structural reform.

A further critical issue is precisely related to the annual setting of quotas, which are increasingly insufficient for the real needs of those who want to enter Italy to work and those who need to hire foreign labor. Looking at the data for 2023, applications for entry for work were six times the quotas set (136,000 units), and only 23 percent of the quotas made available materialized in the signing of the residence contract, with the simultaneous application for the issuance of a residence permit¹, as revealed by the Ero straniero campaign’s monitoring of the outcomes of the flow decrees.

A system that generates irregularities and vulnerabilities

This is causing situations of precariousness at the social level and a sharp increase and aggravation of cases of vulnerability (violence in the labor and sexual sphere, health problems, substance addiction, exploitation) that affect people who arrived legally on the national territory through the Flow Decree. These are workers who found themselves in a condition of irregularity immediately after entering Italy, because, in most cases, they no longer found – and not through their own responsibility – the willingness to be hired by the employer or the employer in whose employ they were supposed to work.

Those who find themselves in this situation have little chance of accessing a residence permit, slipping into a condition of irregularity from which it is almost impossible to escape. One of the few safeguards is the residence permit for awaiting employment, which is, however, characterized by strong discretion, lack of operational clarity and remote application: there are only 309 issued in the Flow Decree procedures for the year 2022 and 83 for 2023 (figure updated to January 2024)².

Without knowledge of the territory, the protections to be resorted to, and the language, workers in this limbo have virtually no alteratives to remaining invisible and working in the black, in a condition of strong blackmail and dependence by those who take advantage of these situations of difficulties. Also not excluded from these contexts are those who, despite having found job placement upon arrival in Italy, wait several months for convocation at the Prefectures and are subject to abuses of all sorts within distorting market dynamics, with so-called “gray” contracts.

Public administration delays and their impact on the lives of migrant people

Also impacting this situation are the long waits between the employer’s submission of the application for employment abroad and the arrival of workers in Italy, which is also determined by the employment of precarious and numerically inadequate personnel at the Prefectures and Police Headquarters.

In such extended timelines, malfeasance and corruption in some countries of origin often creep in, making the migration experiences even more torturous and costly. In this regard, it is considered as discriminatory as it is dangerous to have the mechanism of suspending nihil obstat applications provided by DL 145/2024, concerning citizens from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, because they are considered to be from ” at particular risk“: they would not only be treated unequally compared to workers from other states, but, precisely because of additional obstacles and limitations to obtaining an entry visa, they would be further exposed to situations of exploitation and blackmail, more so than they already are, in the forms that often, precisely in their cases, can be traced back to human trafficking or smuggling for labor exploitation. Such criminal dynamics can easily hide in irregular entries, which, in light of the new changes, may be the only mode of expatriation.

The aforementioned long waits also affect the needs of employers/employers in Italy, who, after so much time has elapsed, no longer have any need to proceed with the hiring of the people for whom the clearance had been requested.

The Flow Decree: an anachronistic, dysfunctional and criminogenic tool

It is now clear that the Flows Decree is inefficient, inadequate and dangerous: instead of simplifying and accelerating the remote matching of labor supply and demand, it not only fails to meet the needs of migrants and the labor market-which continues to complain of labor shortages-but even fuels a criminal system that is structured on situations of irregularity of stay, of “black,” “gray” labor, often imposed even in its most indecent and segregating forms.

Conditions in which those who have been on Italian territory for many years and who, having found themselves in a position of irregularity, have had to abruptly interrupt positively entrenched labor and social relationships in order to continue them in an invisible and illegal way, waiting and hoping for an amnesty, or returning to their own country (when possible) and agreeing, often in a position of obvious power imbalance, with employer/employer for a new visa application. These and other paradoxes are given by the fact that on the one hand the production system requires foreign labor and on the other there is a regulatory framework that makes it difficult to hire foreign people, essentially unchanged for more than 20 years.

The possible solutions

It is for these reasons that a courageous, current and radical reform that definitively overcomes not only the Flow Decree, but also introduces new channels of entry or regularization for foreign-born workers/employees is more necessary than ever.

There is an urgent need for new tools capable of providing an effective response to the needs of the Italian labor market and the mobility projects of migrant people, which Third Sector associations encounter on a daily basis. We need to overcome the click day mechanism and the quota system, introducing new and more flexible channels of entry for work, through sponsorship mechanisms and focusing more on training in the countries of origin.

Work-seeking residence permits should be introduced that allow foreign persons, upon demonstration of appropriate personal or third-party guarantees, to enter Italy temporarily to seek employment and, if hired, to remain there permanently with a work residence permit.

In addition, it is essential to allow the emergence of labor relations of people already in the territory in an irregular condition, often with their families, so as to prevent the growth of mechanisms of social marginalization and exploitation, to the detriment of them and the entire community. Moreover, this position is shared by both employers’ organizations and workers’ unions.

The proposals

The organizations ask:

• The possibility of directly hiring workers/workers residing abroad at any time, outside the quota system and without limitation by nationality or production sectors;
• The creation of new entry channels for work: sponsorship and job search;
• The introduction of a safeguard clause that would give the right to have a residence permit for awaiting employment in the event that, for reasons beyond the workers’ control, the employment relationship is not formalized after entry into Italy;
• The possibility of hiring workers/workers already in Italy although in an irregular condition of stay, through regularization measures on an individual basis – not related to the application for international protection – in the presence of a regular job offer or rootedness in the national territory;
• The streamlining of the procedure for entry and issuance of residence permits and the strengthening of the staffing of the public administration involved in these procedures;
• The possibility of converting all residence permits into permits for

In light of the above, we take the opportunity of your communication to express TAI’s full readiness to work together to reform the current system of entry for work: effective interventions are needed, starting with the present proposals, which can no longer be postponed.

The opportunity is welcome to extend sincere greetings. For the Asylum and Immigration Table:

A Buon Diritto Onlus, ACLI, ActionAid, Amnesty International Italia, ARCI , ASCS, ASGI, Campagna Ero Straniero, Casa dei Diritti Sociali, Centro Astalli , CIES, CIR, CNCA , Migrantes Commission And GPIC Comboni Missionaries Italy, Pope John XXIII Community, CoNNGI, EMERGENCY, Europasilo, FCEI, Migrantes Foundation, Forum to Change the Order of Things, IRC Italy, Italians Without Citizenship, Doctors of the World, Oxfam Italy, ReCoSol, REDNova, Senza Confine, SIMM, UIL

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1 Ero Straniero Campaign “The real numbers of the flow decree: a system that continues to create irregularities” of 05/24/2024 and “Ero straniero, counter-song on the flow decree: our reading of the data” of 06/07/2024

2 Ero Straniero Campaign “The real numbers of the flow decree: a system that continues to create irregularities” of 24/05/2024

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