It was the year 2006. The exaltation of the “necessary” immigration, “so that the country can grow”, “wanted by the industrialists” was a bipartisan lie, shared by the Right and the Left. By the Right so that it can control the pricing in the labour market, by the Left for electoral reasons. Paolo Ferrero, the Minister for Social Solidarity, said: “In the continent of Africa it’s likely that there are thirty million young people aged between 18 and 25 who are ready to leave their homes and their loved ones” and he added “it is they who come and do the work that often the Italians no longer want to do … Today we have to understand that we have become a country of immigration.” Ferrero hadn’t understood a thing. Prodi went home and ‘Rifondazione Comunista’ was eliminated from Parliament. The immigrants “come to do the work that the Italians no longer want to do” have above all been made use of in the building industry. Italy has been ‘cementified’ with new public buildings, overpasses, with additional lanes on the motorways, with warehouses, residential areas without residents. Those who have been constructing, especially in the North, have raked in sums of money that have never been seen before. The new arrivals have been treated like modern slaves, underpaid, often sacrificed to the God called Money with human offerings called “White Deaths” {deaths in the workplace}, without social security, they are ‘invisible’ citizens. Five years have gone by. Work is a chimera. Real rates of unemployment are at 14% if you consider the ones who are ‘discouraged’, the ones who are no longer looking for work. Out of every four unemployed people, one is a foreigner.
Since 2008 the number of foreigners without a job has gone up by 95,000 people and 80% of them are in the North. Once more we have become a nation of emigrants. If in the EU the first ones to leave their countries are those from Romania (1.9 million of whom almost a million are in Italy), in second place there’s Italy with 1.2 million people, almost all of whom are young, and often with degrees and diplomas. The overall number of foreigners without a job is 235,000. Unemployment among foreigners will double in a short time. That’s an easy wager. The reason is simple. The building industry, the only sector that has been growing in Italy in the last decade, is in its death throes. By the end of the year 2011, it will have 290,000 fewer workers than in 2008. The other sectors of industry have been in a structural crisis for some time. They can’t create jobs. The growth of GDP in Italy from the year 2000 to the present day is the worst in the world apart from Haiti. Once the wild cementification boom finishes, there’s almost nothing left for the foreign manual workforce. What will happen to them? Italian unemployed people have reference points, family, friends, but the foreigners? Meanwhile the ‘decreto flussi’ {Quota Agreement} is looking at a further 150,000 people coming from abroad. In order to allow them to come in, it’s necessary for 150,000 Italians, possibly young and with degrees, to go out in order to leave space for them.