As stated previously, in this article we are dealing with that reception system phase that could be defined as a “long-term phase”.
This phase has been subjected to several critics from the Government itself so that it has added some provisions within the “Security Decree” aimed to largely amend its current discipline. With few simple interventions indeed, it has been tried to create a new “centralized” reception system – the exact opposite of the “spread” one, which is the current system in force that, despite some difficulties, is giving great outcomes and it has the favor of the local authorities, of the humanitarian associations and of the European Union.
In this article we would investigate the above said discipline step-by-step, then we would enumerate the new dispositions of the Salvini Decree – which he would like to apply to the new reception system.
Current Discipline
First of all, the current discipline states who are those who are the beneficiaries of these services, so that no unnecessary resources would be wasted. Article 14 of the Legislative Decree n. 142/2015 indeed, in its latest version, states that only those who have both: (1) formalized the request for international protection during the initial phase; (2) been without livelihood for him/her and his/her family could have access to the reception system. Better, they could be accepted within the Protection System for the asylum seekers and the refugees (SPRAR, in Italian), if he/she ask for it.
The services provided within these premises has to grant a decent quality of life, according to the refugee’s specific needs and situation. For this purpose, minimum services as a decent accommodation and having meals which take into account cultural differences have to be given, together with basic services which help the person to start a new life within a completely new and unknown territory in a more a more autonomous way.
Usually the foreigner is authorized to stay within the SPRAR reception center until the territorial Commission in charge of his/her request has decided. If the request is rejected, then the refugee could appeal against the Commission’s decision within the terms.
Often, more than two months from the submission of the request for international protection pass without a conclusion has been reached and the reason for that could not be attributed to the refugee.
In these cases, it is possible to give a temporary residence permit, which could not be transformed in a working permit anyway. Thank to this by the way, refugees could join the training courses offered by the local authorities – if there are any.
Furthermore, in order to grant an effective integration, avoiding huge social unrest issues – which would negatively influence the territory which hosts the refugee – to raise, the above said Decree gives the refugee the possibility to keep on being hosted within the territorial reception centers for a longer period than that initially prescribed. This is true if the refugee meets some requirements and he/she has specifically requested so.
The authorization to the refugee’s access within a SPRAR – and jointly the specification of the length of his/her stay within the reception center – has to be given by the Prefecture together with the Department for the civil liberties and immigrations of the Ministry of the Interior, once it has been checked that there are available spots within the premises and that the refugee is actually in need.
One of the main problems which worried the legislator the most at that time, was that a treatment and the services which were granted were as much as possible equal within the SPRARs all around the national territory. For this reason, a National Plan for the Reception has been formulated and the criteria for the regional redistribution of migrants in relation to the effective preparedness of each municipality – which have to be decided together with the Unified Conferences – have been determined. These tasks were assigned to the Coordination Table established within the Ministry of the Interior by art. 29 of the Legislative Decree n. 251/2007.
Since the very beginning by the way, a not insignificant aspect arises: the coordination could not be limited at the national level since the decision processes are too slow. Moreover, these processes might not be taking into account the specific need of each municipality – which sometimes could be so peculiar to force the town itself to adopt a totally different strategy from that adopted by other local realities.
In order to solve this problem, Regional Table have been set in the Prefecture of the capital of the region. The aim of this Table is to carry on the programming agreed on the National Table. Specifically, the relationship between these two tables of mediation and coordination works as following: the National Plan identifies the amount of spots to assign at the reception system according to the given period, while the Regional Coordination Table identifies either the criteria for the redistribution of the spots within the region or those of localization of the initial reception premises and the extraordinary ones.
Composition and working method of both the National and Regional Tables are set out by a Decree of the Minister of the Interior.
Deserving a special mention instead, are those people who have peculiar needs who, as defined by art. 17 of the Legislative Decree n. 142/2015, are: children, unaccompanied children, disables, elders, pregnant women, single parents with children, human trafficking victims, people with sever diseases or with mental issues, people who have been proved that had been tortured, raped or other serious form of physical, psychological or sexual violence, genital mutilation victims, those who have seriously subjected to violence for their sexual orientation or gender identity.
These people indeed, are entitled to peculiar reception measures specifically modified according to their individual situation. Given the difference in the treatment of those people and the difficulties they bring into the reception system, a periodic verification is done by qualified staff in order to check the effectiveness of these situations. Generally, however, the principle of priority of the children’s superior needs is the driving criteria for the application of the reception measures provided by the Decree.
The above mentioned Coordination Tables then, have not only to check and monitor the quality of the services provided by the SPRARs and the respect of the established reception standards as well as the criteria used by local authorities in assigning these services to implementing subjects, but they have also to check and monitor the effectiveness of the requirements which have granted the refugee the status of person with peculiar needs.
Lastly, it has to be said that the fruition of the benefits included in this second phase of the reception system is not automatically provided; migrants must respect some rules. Access to the SPRAR system could be revoke indeed if the refugee: (1) leave the premise; (2) does not show up for the interview in front of the Territorial Commission; (3) repeatedly or seriously breaks the rule of the center; (4) has been proved to have sufficient livelihoods.
Recent Modifications
On the 12th of April 2017, Law n. 46/2017 has been approved. This Law has converted the provisions included within Law Decree n. 13/2017 – better known as Minniti Decree – into effective law.
This law, even before the current Security Decree, have introduced some modifications which may worsen the protection of migrants’ rights.
The legislator indeed, has created 26 sections of the court specialized on immigration and international protection matters and on free circulation of citizens within the European Union, abolishing the second juridical grade (i.e. the claim in front of the Appeal Court) even though the complain at the Cassation is still available. The ratio behind this decision would be to simplify and speed up the procedures for the examination of the requests, which usually take place in very long time. Unlikely, one of the problems which arises in this scenario is that the judicial procedure would be cursory and it would not protect civil liberties so well. This method indeed, risks to be not so coherent with the European Union Directives – aimed to grant an adequate protection to the asylum seeker and his/her right to a fair trial.
Another of the fundamental problem arises from the attribution to these courts of the exclusive jurisdiction on all the issues they are in charge of: being these sections very few and spread in all the national territory, both the migrant and his/her lawyer could be very far from the competent judicial office making even harder for the lawyer to assist his/her client.
Without getting too much in the judicial details (if you are interested to them, you could always write a comment on our newsletter and we would give you the answer as soon as possible), the procedure of the processes set out by the Minniti Decree is concluded after a decision has been taken on the basis of the acts and the written documents provided by the parties. The oral fair hearing then, has been fully eliminated but, in most of the cases, this is the most powerful resource for a refugee since, being forced to rapidly run away from the Country, he/she does not have appropriate documentation which could prove his/her statements and the Home Country does not cooperate with the Italian authorities in order to provide that documentation.
Another modification which has been harshly criticized is that of recording the migrants’ interviews with the authority in charge to examine their request – and to which they could refuse to be subjected to only providing a justified motion – instead of the hearing them directly in front of the formation of the Court. These records indeed could potentially bend the authenticity of the interview itself and they create a distance among justice and those who are supposed to receive it; this in open contrast with the principles of a fair trial and the provisions of Directive 2013/32/EU adopted on the 26th of June 2016. Specifically, this Directive assign to the judicial body in charge of the migrant’s valuation, a duty of collaboration in searching for proofs of what the migrant has told – even because the migrant is a weal party by definition.
One of the few proposals which has been actually greeted positively by those who daily fight for an effective and efficient integration process is that of giving the Prefecture the opportunity to promote initiatives aimed to deploy those who seek for international protection in social useful activities for the local communities, on a voluntary and free-of-charge basis. For this purpose, municipalities could propose projects designed for the immigration and asylum sectors and they could be founded only with European funds.
Even though it is still not possible to effectively evaluate the Minniti Decree’s effects since its very recent adoption, the former Government has already stated further modifications of the reception system. On the contrary, given their harshness and disproportion, these modifications would produce immediate effects on the system itself. Their negative consequences then, would not be experienced only by the migrants, but also by the hosting communities around the whole national territory.
Salvini Decree
The Law Decree n. 113/2018, better known as Security Decree (or Salvini Decree, given the name of the Italian former Minister of the Interior which has always considered it as his “workhorse”), is aimed to fight the illegal migration – this term is not appropriate to the effective object of the dispositions but Mr. Salvini has insisted in using it, even if he has received strong criticisms either from judicial experts and political for this – through the introduction of measures that widely would worsen the conditions of those migrants who will ask to have access to the international protection.
The first disposition which has been added and that would make discussions arise for a long time since it is highly punitive, is that concerning the abrogation of the permit for humanitarian reasons.
This permit was due to the migrant who does not meet the requirements to ask for asylum or subsidiary protection. More specifically, political asylum could be asked when the concrete risk of being victim of personal persecution within his/her Country has been proved, as stated by the Geneva Convention. A migrant could ask for subsidiary protection when, even if it is not possible to prove the risk of being victim of personal prosecution, the risk of suffering for a serious damage has been proved.
Being able to provide these proofs is not so easy and, unless there is a proof of a war or a persecutory situation in a Country, is almost impossible for the refugees finding proofs of the violence they have already experienced or of the risks they would face if sent back. In order to avoid that a person or his/her family would not be protected from treats of a concrete violence, the humanitarian permit had been introduced. This permit was released when there were serious reasons to offer protection – mainly for humanitarian reasons or because it was a constitutional duty (health, political instability, wars and persecutions).
From the technical relation attached to the Law Decree n. 113/2018 it is clear that the reason why the former Government has abrogated this permit should be that “there was a disproportion among the number of the recognition of the permits specifically disciplined at the European level (in the latest 5 years, refuges status: 7% ; subsidiary protection: 15%) and the humanitarian permits (25%, improved up to the 28% during 2018)”. The humanitarian protection is indeed, the fundamental way of access to a temporary resident permit for the asylum seekers.
Taking a closer look to the data indeed, it is evident that in the 2017 around 81.527 asylum requests have been examined; 33.873 (41,5%) have been accepted, of which 6.827 have granted the refugee status, 6.880 have granted the subsidiary protection) and 20.166 for humanitarian protection.
The focus of the former Government then, was on these 20.000 people – which would be those directly affected by the above said abrogation – without taking into due account the effective difficulties these people face to find concrete proofs of prosecutions and physical or mental violence (either experienced or threatened), as stated before.
Another highly criticized – even by some institutions – modifications is the downsizing of the SPRAR system, which would go from the “spread reception” model to a “centralized” one.
Currently, as we have previously seen, the second reception phase is attributed to local authorities – which still must coordinate their efforts with those of the national level – since they are the only entity which could adopt different dispositions in order to better adapt the reception system to the peculiarity of the territory.
With this new system, strongly wanted by Mr. Salvini instead, refugees are back in being hosted in huge, centralized and dispersive premises which, given to the high number of people they would be forced to host after the downsizing of the reception centers, would be built in isolated territory or in areas that do not well fit with the urban community. This would only improve either the difficulties for them to integrate within the local communities or their confinement. Consequently, the risk for criminal organizations to take advantage of these refugees are improved too – even though this could easily be avoided including migrants in a maximum legal context.
First criticisms to the downsizing of the SPRAR
This latest modification is the most criticized one, as said.
The President of the Chamber himself, even if not directly taking a side, has arranged a conference entitled “Immigration as a resource” where he has stated that a “spread reception” model has to be sustained – totally in contrast with what the Salvini Decree has stated.
This conference took place on the 3rd of October 2018 and together with the President of the Chamber, Raffaele Fico, there were local administrations and humanitarian associations. In that occasion, either the Major of Chiusano d’Asti or those of Latina, had given the audience food for thought.
The Major of Chiusano d’Asti, Mrs. Maria Varvello, indeed, has declared that currently there is a network of municipalities which synergistically manages the integration producing great outcomes, recognized even at an international level. A great number of SPRARs indeed, has proven to “build integration and autonomy” showing to the public opinion that the more someone is integrated within the society, the more he/she could become more independent – the exact opposite happens if someone is isolated.
The Major of Latina, Mr. Damiano Coletta indeed, has declared that the downsizing and the limitation of the access to the premises built for simplifying the integration (that, as we have seen in the first part of our “journey”, is given only to those who are entitled for the refugees status and to the unaccompanied children) would force those who have been excluded by these premises to utilize the extraordinary reception system, exacerbating the already critical situation of this emergency and residual measure. This, added Coletta, would highly increase the managing costs of the whole system. The money-saving so strongly advertised by the former Government and which would have to follow the adoption of these measures then, would be purely theoretical.
Moreover, summing up what has been already said, the President of the Commission for the Immigration of the National Association of the Italian Municipalities, Mrs. Irma Melini, has stated that: “During the meeting of the Commission it has been underlined either by the big or the small municipalities, concern for the consequences of the approval (by the Chamber) of this Law Decree would bring”. This because, she added “modifications to the reception system would downsize the SPRAR network, reducing it to barely nothing, in favor of a big-centers-system as the CARA, in this way provoking a huge impact on the territory and making for the local administrators very difficult to protect their citizens”. Moreover, “the governance, and subsequently the control, of the phenomena within the city is not in the hands of the majors anymore; they would be in charge only of managing the negative effects that this model would bring on social services and on the security within the Municipalities. All these were aspects that, thank to the SPRAR system, never were a burden for the territory.”
Lastly, on the 22nd of October 2018 an Italian City Hall has officially taken a side. Turin indeed, with 30 votes in favor and 2 against, has approved a document in which it invites the Town Council to ask to the Government and to Salvini to “temporary suspend the effects of the Salvini Decree until the conclusion of the parliamentary iter” and to open a public debate with all the Italian big cities in order to evaluate the real effects of the dispositions from an economic, social and of territorial security point of view.
According to the promoters of this request infact, “the disposition would encourage illegal acts within the territory, making the City bear the costs of fragile people and of the children protection, together with interrupting the positive integration phenomena started within the SPRARs”.
The Law Decree is currently under the consideration of the Chamber but it is easily understandable that the path for its conversion into law would be troubled.
We can just wait for further developments.
