The approximate five million foreigners currently living in Italy – 8.2% of the resident population – make an 8.8% contribution to GDP. The numbers point to an immigrant presence equal to the number of Italians residing abroad and to a major financial impact that affects even the social welfare system.
The situation could also be described, for contingent reasons, as a phenomenon whose recent numerical explosion is now pressing heavily against the doors to the European Union. Immigrants intent on improving their lot in life are being joined by refugees fleeing civil war, tyranny and new forms of fundamentalism. A flow destined to continue over the coming years and that has triggered a crisis among Western societies still incapable of accepting the fact that immigration is a structural phenomenon whose solution lies in bold and farsighted policies.
The European Union has operated to date, and at times in a contradictory manner, through emergency initiatives. If continued, such an approach will not lead to real solutions but to costs, and not only economic ones, that will be difficult to recoup.
What is needed is a leadership capable of making decisions that step outside the interests of its electorate, and of forging strategies rather than short-term accords. Leaders alone are not enough however. Societies need to be made capable of understanding the phenomenon, which must be reported and debated with the utmost honesty. If the contribution of the public service is essential – institutional according to many – so too is the involvement of the ruling class, political and industrial, in discussing it and avoiding propagandistic excesses.
Only in this way can society become aware that immigration, surely problematic in its management, also offers opportunity.
If, as was mentioned, we are in the presence of an influx impossible to contain with old or new walls, it would then be worth trying to channel it positively. Two instruments were considered fundamental: education and employment.
School system investment policies enacted by the current government could be made more effective if they included increased investments in those areas where there is a greater presence of children of first generation immigrants.
As regards employment, there are several important and indispensable aspects. Italy has a documented shortage of low-skilled and high-skilled workers. The former are needed for those jobs that there are no longer enough Italians to do; the latter are the result of a mixture of “brain-drain” and “brain-gain”: young graduates emigrate to seek their fortunes and Italy suffers its lack of attraction for highly qualified workers.
A second aspect, which also pertains to social welfare, is the ageing of the population. On the one hand, the demand for caregivers is rising and, on the other, the number of working-age persons (20-64 years) is dropping. In the 1970s, there were 5 working-age persons for every worker over the age of 65; that ratio today stands at 3 to 1 and is estimated to shrink to 1.5 to 1 by 2050.
Immigrants constitute a strong, mainly low-skilled, labor force and are an asset to the Italian social welfare system. Current data indicate that they pay more into the system than they take out; some even do it free since, for one reason or another, once they return to their countries of origin, they do not apply for benefits accrued in Italy.
It is, nevertheless, essential not to fall into the trap of believing that the contingent phenomenon cannot be taken into consideration. Analyses of integration policies cannot but consider a migration flow destined for future growth in relation to job market capacity forecasts, the future burden on welfare and other social and territorial factors.
Analyses that, only by avoiding feigned alliances marked by “good-bad” attitudes, can lead to effective choices and true integration.