Press
ITALY GOING TO HALVE LABOR FORCE FROM NON-EU COUNTRIES
Chisinau. Italian parliamentarians will soon consider the bill on reducing the number of labor migrants, drafted and submitted to the legislature by Italian Minister of the Interior Roberto Maroni.
In particular, Minister Maroni has offered reducing the number gastarbeiters in the country by minimum one-half, to thus take care of the Italians who have already lost jobs or may lose them due to the aggravating world financial crisis.
Some time ago, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano met with the representatives of foreign ethnic communities, to whom he stated that “…the new labor energy from all over the world is refreshing and strengthening the nation”. He also said that in early November the Government of Italy approved an annual quota for immigrants from countries that are not EU members – 170 thousand, or exactly like the quota was in three previous years.
Roberto Morani and Minister of Labor Maurizio Sacconi stood up against that. They demanded to impose firm restrictions for immigrants taking jobs first of all in the construction and industry sectors. They believe that subsequently, analogous restrictions need to be slapped in the tourism sector and agriculture.
Minister Morani has drawn up a ‘black list’ of countries that has included CIS states, former Yugoslav republics, Albania, as well as Romania and Bulgaria, whose citizens become the ‘heroes’ of criminal news in Italy most often of all. As for Moldovans, Morani stated they overwhelmingly come to Italy by using the possibility of easy acquiring of the Romanian citizenship.
According to the research entitled “La Popolazione Straniera Residente in Italia” in 2004-2007, carried out by the Italian Statistics Institute, there were 55,803 nationals of Moldova staying in Italy as of the beginning of 2007, of whom 65% were women. In 2005 alone, women having the Moldovan citizenship gave birth to 1,038 children in Italy, of whom 40.2% were born of Italian fathers, which the researchers believe is a convincing indication that the Moldovans have strongly integrated into the Italian society.
In the nearest time, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Feattini will pay a visit to Chisinau to discuss development of bilateral relations and economic cooperation in the context of opening of Italian Embassy in Chisinau in January 2009.
