From Repubblica dated 19 September 2023
Chiara Saraceno
The government provides for 18 months of detention in repatriation centers, in violation of the constitutional principles of respect for the person
Eighteen months to receive a deportation order and be condemned to permanent illegality. This will be the effective result of the lengthening of the duration of detention in repatriation centers.
We know from experience that very few will actually be sent back to their countries of origin. Because Italy has no agreement in this sense with many countries and even the few with which it has one agree to “take back” their citizens slowly.
For the most part, the months pass in vain. Indeed, in addition to not giving any results in terms of removal, they create a population of marginalized people, left to their own devices and to the pitfalls of crime and the blackmail of unscrupulous employers, without documents, rights, the possibility of earning a living, live, study, legally.
Take a chance on this newspaper, as other constitutionalists have done, has made it very clear that such a long period of detention without there having been a trial is completely outside the Constitution and its principles of respect for the person. Because it is detention, and the fact that it is called “administrative” and not judicial only makes it more arbitrary. But it is also counterproductive in terms of security in the name of which it is imposed, as well as proving to be a waste of public money.
Keeping thousands of people locked up for months is costly, even if with the Bossi-Fini law the resources for both services and essential needs have been drastically reduced, significantly worsening the living conditions of the poor people thus imprisoned without hope.
Instead of extending the detention time, it would be better to use it to seriously teach the Italian language and train them professionally so that, if sent back to their homeland, they can use the skills thus acquired and, if they cannot be postponed, they can enter the quotas established annually for new entries. .
It is paradoxical that, according to Bossi-Fini, an entrepreneur who needs foreign workers must go and look for them in the country of origin, and cannot offer opportunities and training to those who are already on Italian territory, even if they arrived “illegally”, assessing their availability and skills.
It is almost as if anyone who arrives “illegally”, which is the only way for many to arrive given the absence or restriction of legal channels, is automatically a criminal and therefore to be rejected a priori.
Furthermore, the same also happens with asylum seekers, who, after the dismantling of widespread reception by Bossi-Fini, are also locked up, even if for a shorter period, without adequate services that favor their integration if and when their application is accepted.
All united by being forced into an empty time – almost as if they were themselves empty to lose. A responsibility shared by the governments that have followed one another from Conte 1 onwards and which the current executive wants to further and proudly accentuate.
Even with the application to foreign minors who arrived “illegally” of the treatment that he attempted, without entirely succeeding, to impose, with the Caivano decree, on “deviant” Italian minors: de facto considering them adults over the age of fourteen, therefore to be detained together with adults in repatriation centers.
There is a contempt, not only for the Italian Constitution, but for international norms on the rights of girls and adolescents which is shocking, especially since these are young people who often already have painful and violent experiences behind them.
You can’t welcome everyone, it’s true. But we can welcome more and better, not only to respect the Constitution, international law and common humanity, but also for selfish reasons.
Foreigners welcomed civilly, in whom we invest in training and integration paths, even if temporarily restricted in their freedom of movement, can become a resource in an aging country and already needs to rejuvenate today, not in twenty or thirty years. its own population.
And even if sent back to their country of origin, they can return there having not wasted time, but having had the opportunity to enrich their human capital and consider Italy not exclusively hostile.
Treating “illegal” migrants as disposable waste only creates marginal people, if not enemies.