Italy tightens the screw on immigration

timesofmalta.com - Italy tightens the screw on immigration

Wednesday, 13th May 2009 - 16:01CET

AFP

The right-wing Italian government, already under fire for sending would-be immigrants back to Libya, tightened the screw further today with a law making those who arrive in Italy liable to a fine.

A total of 316 lawmakers voted for the legislation punishing illegal entry or residence on Italian soil with a fine of between €5,000 and €10,000, in a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's administration.

The bill also increases the period of detention of illegal immigrants for identification from two months to six, and makes anyone letting accommodation to them liable to up to three months in jail.

The anti-immigration measures are part of a wider security package to be the subject of two other votes of confidence later in the day. They concern the fight against minor urban crime and the mafia respectively.

The whole legislation will then go to the Senate which will vote on it with the same procedure.

Other measures in the bill, which has faced opposition from the right as well as the left, set up a register of the homeless and citizens' vigilante patrols, while anyone who insults the police faces up to three years in prison.

Special prisons will also be built for mafia kingpins.

Italy has rejected criticism of its operation to return to Libya boat people picked up by Italian vessels outside Italian territorial waters to avoid the responsibility of taking them in.

Rome began its controversial new policy last week under an agreement with Tripoli when coast guard and navy vessels intercepted boatloads of people and took them back to Libya, which serves as a staging ground for would-be immigrants of many nationalities.