Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi defended his center-right government’s hardline immigration policy on Tuesday as tough new measures passed a first hurdle in parliament.
Berlusconi, who won elections in April in coalition with the anti-immigration Northern League, said Italy had a “benevolent” attitude toward immigrants but “must turn away [foreigners] who come to Italy to commit crimes.”
He spoke after UN independent experts slammed the administration’s moves to fingerprint gypsies, or Roma — a policy the European Parliament said last week would clearly be discriminatory.
Italy’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved by a wide margin tough new legislation to make illegal immigration a custodial offense punishable by between six months and four years in prison. The measures would facilitate deportation and extend the allowable detention of suspected illegal immigrants from two to 18 months.
In addition, non-Italians convicted of crimes would face penalties one-third stiffer than those handed down to Italians.
The Senate is expected to approve the measures — which are opposed by the left, Catholic formations, human-rights groups and some EU bodies — next week.
Italy’s policy towards immigrants — notably ethnic Romanians, many of them Roma — has come under intense scrutiny since Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a Northern League member, said last month that security forces would fingerprint gypsies.
While gypsies have been fingerprinted in Milan and Naples, authorities in Rome are opposed to the policy and will not fingerprint Roma in and around the capital in a census to begin this week, ANSA news agency reported.
UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diene, said on Tuesday that he was “extremely concerned” about the measures.
“By exclusively targeting the Roma minority, this proposal could be unambiguously classified as discriminatory,” Diene said in a statement.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Italy was to meet Maroni yesterday to discuss the rights of foreign children and adolescents, its local chief Vincenzo Spadafora told ANSA. UNICEF was to give Maroni a document drafted by more than 30 associations at a roundtable on the issue.
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