Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - Caritas Roma, sponsored by CNEL and International Organisation for Migrants IOM, presented “Contemporary Immigration in Italy - Current trends and future prospects”, on Wednesday 1 October 2003, at the CNEL Library, Via David Lubin 2. The volume is the work of a “Dossier Caritas” committee involving 11 countries and it is a presentation to other countries of the migratory situation in Italy. Speakers at the press conference included Prof. Giorgio Alessandrini (Deputy President of the National office for co-ordination of policies of social integration of foreign workers at CNEL); Dr Peter Schatzer (new IOM head in Rome); Fr Michael Blume (Under Secretary Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples); Sabatino Marchione (Director central policies immigration and asylum Ministry of the Interior).
The book is structured in four parts: immigration to Italy within the international context; the relationship between immigration and Italian society; the Italian labour market; and the legal and policy framework on immigration. Based on information received from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the editors of the report estimate the legal foreign population in Italy at the beginning of 2003 at almost 2.4 million. The number of applications for regularisation from migrants between 1986 and 2002 reached 1.566 million. The report also shows that between 1861 and the beginning of this century, 28 million Italians emigrated. Currently, there are four million Italians living outside the country. The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that the number of people of Italian origin world wide is between 60 and 70 million.
In an address read by Fr Michael Blume, SVD, under-secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Secretary of the same Council, said: “We all know that behind a number there is a person with his or her dignity, suffering (and how much suffering there is in the heart of the migrant) but also joys, great and small, hopes, abilities-difficulties, husband/wife, family far away (most of them ) or with me. For Christians, migrants are our brothers and sisters in humanity or in religion, who bear the image of Christ, the divine Stranger who identified himself with the least and little ones. Migration is not just a technical problem, it is human moral and religious; it is a problem of the dire poverty of millions of people who can barely survive.” The Archbishop said he hoped the Dossier would serve to “promote laboratories of co-existence and solidarity, promote and create opportunities for reciprocal knowledge between immigrants and local people, peaceful relations among people of different cultures, in our parishes, church movements, new communities, associations, schools as well as society in general”. MS (Fides Service 2/10/2003 EM lines 35 Words: 474)
