Non-EU work, 54% of applications from the South: growing risk of fraud

But to feed the avalanche of applications, in addition to the hunger for labour (mechanics, for example, asks for more than 15,000 subordinate workers), there may be false applications sent only to obtain money from those who want to enter Italy with a regular contract. And this even when there is the knowledge that the applications sent will not be successful because they will be rejected.

'We must avoid,' adds Romano Magrini, 'that a regular entry system for immigrants is instead used to fuel undeclared work and crime. But the solution is not to reduce quotas, because that would end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What is needed is to intensify controls and verify that every successful application leads to the signing of a residence contract'.

The procedure of the flows decrees provides that after the click day, the applications are examined by the single immigration desks of the prefectures, which issue the nulla osta, and are then forwarded to the consulates of the countries of origin for the issuance of entry visas.

Once the worker has entered Italy legally, the company must ask the prefecture for an appointment to draw up a residence contract. This is a fundamental step, because it allows the non-EU citizen to have a residence permit and to reside in our country legally.

The risk, however, is that non-EU workers enter Italy with a nulla osta and a regular visa, but then become irregular because the company that called them has disappeared or is no longer willing to hire them. An eventuality, the latter, that can be caused by the delay in the worker's entry (even more than six months), which has forced the company to find another solution, but also by incorrect requests from the start.

Verification that the procedure has been correctly concluded and that the allocation of quotas corresponds to the signing of residence contracts is made difficult by the shortage of labour inspectors.

'In the last two click days, there was no longer a limit of five applications for private employers,' Roberto Caponi, director of labour policies and welfare at Confagricoltura, also points out, 'who can submit an unlimited number, without the controls that instead concern trade associations and professionals. Re-introducing the ceiling could be a way to curb use for other purposes'.

Misbehaviour exists, however, all over Italy. 'To make statistics is impossible,' says Vincenzo Greco, secretary of the Cgil Milan Metropolitan Chamber of Labour, 'but we have come across cases where virtual work relations had been 'sold'. Companies had started the paperwork and then disappeared and the workers asked us for help to solve the problem'.

For Santo Biondo, Uil confederal secretary with responsibility for social policies and immigration, 'there is no doubt that the entire productive world needs labour. But as a first intervention, it would be necessary to make an amnesty for foreign workers who are already irregularly present in Italy and who cannot be properly contracted'.