Migrants, from humanitarian evacuation to abandonment in the reception centre: in Italy for over a year but for them everything is still at a standstill

Pulled out of the Libyan concentration camps by the UNHCR, taken to Italy by plane with a humanitarian evacuation complete with a warm welcome at Fiumicino by the Ministers of the Interior Plant yourself and Foreign Affairs Tajaniand then incredibly abandoned for a year and a half without documents or status in a reception center in Calabria.

Everything stopped

It is the absurd story of four migrants from South Sudan and Sudan, all with the requirements to obtain refugee status, emblem of the totally approximate state of reception in Italy. Even for those who, like these four, arrived in Italy not on a boat but by plane and on the initiative of the Italian government. To which, just to give an order of magnitude, the maintenance costs of these four people have already reached 70,000 euros without them having even been able to start their integration journey for a year and a half now. Not an Italian lesson, not a training course, no work, as the Cutro decree provides for those who, not having refugee status, are hosted in reception centers and not in the Sai system. But here is their story reported by Arci which has been trying to help them for some months.

The arrival

The four migrants land in Fiumicino on 30 November 2022 with a humanitarian evacuation from Libya, the first of the Meloni government, welcomed with a press conference attended by ministers Piantedosi and Tajani. They are part of a group of people chosen, due to their requirements, by the UNHCR. Therefore the Interior Ministry knows everything about them, the granting of refugee status is a given. The four leave their fingerprints at the border police and are taken to a CAS in the province of Cosenza.

The request for help and the waiting

And there, apart from food and accommodation, no one takes care of them anymore or gives them news. Last August, they called the Arci toll-free number and asked for help. After 9 months no one even made them formalize their asylum request. Arci moves and within a couple of weeks manages to get at least the first appointment. Once the request has been presented, the four await the summons from the territorial asylum commission. Never arrived.

“An incredible situation that says a lot about the state of the reception system in Italy – reports Filippo Miragli of Arci Nazionale – these people who the Italian government has chosen for legal and protected entry are abandoned, without permission they cannot have a bank account , a work contract, a house rental.

Wasted money

Their integration journey hasn’t even begun after a year and a half. Just money thrown away by the Meloni government which continues its electoral propaganda on people’s skin. For them, does this mean encouraging legal entry into Italy?”