Coronavirus: Italy to give 600,000 illegal migrants right to stay

More than half a million illegal migrants in Italy will be given permits to stay and work under plans by the government.

Italian Red Cross agents register migrants rescued in the Mediterranean as they disembark from the Sea Watch NGO's ship in February. Picture: AFP

More than half a million illegal ­migrants in Italy will be given permits to stay and work under plans put forward by the government, which said they had proved essential for caring for the elderly and picking crops in recent weeks.

Unregistered migrants have toiled in fields up and down the country during two months of lockdown, ensuring secure food supplies for Italians stuck at home while risking arrest if caught by police.

“The food on our table comes from these fields. Now we must hand over those rights which have been denied to those who work in them,” said Peppe Provenzano, minister for the south of Italy.

The plan to give illegal migrants the coveted permits — valid for six months, and renewable — was proposed by Agriculture Minister Teresa Bellanova, who claimed 600,000 worked on farms and in homes as carers.

The measure may now be inserted in a temporary government decree, which would go into immediate effect but require a vote in parliament after 60 days. It does not give migrants the right to vote.

Ms Bellanova said forcing migrants to hide from the authorities was a medical as well as an ethical issue, since coronavirus clusters could go unchecked. She cited a shanty town for farm pickers near Foggia, southern Italy, which packs in 3000 people. “There is no social distancing, no masks, no sanitiser,” she said.

A government source acknowledged that legalising farm workers also had a practical side: the 100,000 Romanian pickers who usually travel to Italy every year are now trapped at home by corona­virus travel bans, as spring crops ripen in the fields. “Italy needs the Indians, Pakistanis and Africans who are here now to fill that gap, and making them legal helps that,” the source said.

The measure would also legalise about 100,000 illegal migrants who work as home carers.

Many lost their jobs during Italy’s lockdown and with it their permits to stay, which are dependent on employment.

The 100,000 clandestine carers form part of the total number of 650,000 illegal migrants in Italy, Matteo Villa, a researcher at the ISPI think tank, said. The country has been by far the largest European destination for migrants setting sail from north Africa in the past decade. “People think they are all Africans who arrived by boat, but that only accounts for about 150,000 of them,” he said.

Of the 15,000 Africans working in fields around Foggia, a third are illegal, Raffaele Falcone, a union official, said. “Many worked in factories in the north for years, lost their jobs and therefore lost their permits to stay and drifted down here to pick fruit off the books, with no contract. Lots have thick Milan accents,” he said.

“Give them a permit and they can rent a place and escape from the shanty towns down here.”

The Italian farmers’ association opposes the amnesty, preferring the British scheme of flying in Eastern European pickers to meet shortfalls.

As of Sunday, Italy had suffered 29,684 deaths out of a caseload of 214,457.

The Times