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Immigration in Italy: resource or threat? Let's start with a snapshot of the situation.
Are they too few or too many? 7% of the total Italian population is formed
by foreign born individuals with regular residency permit,
while illegal migrants make up around 1% of the total population.
Foreign-born population climbed from 1% in 1996 to 4.5% in 2007,
to finally reaching about 7% of the total population in 2010.
The increase being driven in part by EU expansion. The number of migrants has increased,
yet it still below the figures experienced by other advanced economies,
where the share of foreign-born reaches spikes of 25%.
How do migrants enter Italy? 15% enter by land, 73% with a tourist visa
and subsequently overstay. Only 12% get to Italy with a pontoon from Africa.
Thus mass rejections have mostly an impact on media.
Furthermore good shares of the people arriving from African costs are simply asylum seekers.
How educated migrants are? 39.4% of Italian born individuals have concluded secondary education,
while 38.9% of foreign-born did so.
12.5% of Italian born have a university degree, while the figure for foreign-born is 10.2%.
Somehow unexpectedly migrants display educational levels similar to those of natives.
Let's look at their age profile. Migrants are on average younger than Italians.
80% of them are less than 45 years old and 20% less than 15.
While only 50% of Italians are aged below 45.
The share of migrants on the total population enrolled in compulsory school is around 10%,
even 50% in some municipalities in the north of the country.
They will represent a relevant chunk of tomorrow's Italian population.
Their integration is among the most important goals the country has to achieve,
and the school system will play a critical role.
Do migrants come for work? Migrants have very high employment rates,
above those of natives. Being only 6.5% of the total national population
they contribute to produce around 10% of the GDP.
One typical concern with respect to immigration is that migrants might "steal" jobs from natives.
Research from the Bank of Italy and INPS did not find any negative effect of immigration
on employment and wages of natives. On the contrary they found positive effect
on certain groups such as highly educated workers and females.
Indeed, if a firm needs for production ten manual workers for every five engineers,
the availability of more manual workers (thanks to immigration)
would allow the firm to hire more (Italian) engineers.
Moreover, the presence of migrant women providing services such as child and elderly care
allows more Italian women to participate to the formal labour market.
Unfortunately the evidence on the impact on low skilled workers is less clear and it is
likely that they would be at least partially harmed. In some local labour markets demand for specific qualifications if unmatched by supply.
Native and migrant workers are not considered fully substitutable by firms, even within
the same education group. Thus migrants compete mostly with earlier arrived migrants.
Unfortunately the relevant size of the shadow economy in Italy is likely to make the competition between natives and migrants harsher.
For this reason regularizing the situation of many migrants working without official contracts
would benefit both the migrants themselves and the natives.
Another argument, which is often used by the anti-immigration rhetoric,
is that migrants eat up the welfare system and that they take more than what they bring.
But if we look at the data migrants turn out to be a net contributors
to the Italian state that collects from them 4% of total tax revenues and spend only 2.5%
to finance health, education, pensions and benefits. In particular, migrant workers, because they are young
and have high labour market participation rates,contribute greatly to sustain Italian pension system.
Immigration and crime, let's talk about that.
Foreign-born individuals commit 26% of annual crimes in Italy. These are large numbers if one considers that
migrants are only about 6.5% of the total population.
A good fraction of the crimes migrants are accused of are simply related to their illegal status.
Furthermore, crime rates among migrant population went down by more than an half during the last years.
Finally, most of the difference in crime rates is simply due to compositional effect.
If one considers only prosecutions against individuals aged between 18 and 44, the age group
responsible for about 80% of total crimes, crime rates among migrants and Italians look very similar.
Do migrants cause crime to increase? During the last 15 years, despite the robust
increase in the number of migrants, the total number of crimes did not increase significantly.
As is shown in the graph, the total number of crimes committed is the same in year 1991 and 2007.
A study from the Bank of Italy, employing econometric techniques,
finds that the increase in immigration did not cause and increase in crime.
Of course, this is not to deny that migrants propensity to criminal activity does not represent a problem.
Yet the main point is that if we care about fighting crimes, regardless on who commits them
then what is needed is a bold policy against
the structural reasons that determines illegal activity in Italy,
a simple restrictive and repressive policy against migrants would not be the right answer.
Nonetheless, in the public opinion the equation migrant=crime is widespread:
in a pool from IPSO 57% of interviewed reported to consider immigration as a source of crime.
Unfortunately the opinion people have about this topic is mainly build on anecdotal arguments
instead of real evidence. Media play a crucial role in shaping public opinion:
the graph shows how the perception of insecurity grows with the number of crime-related news in TV,
even in the absence of an increase in the number of real crime.
Migration is an important resource for Italy, yet it needs to be properly regulated.
For such reason its management has to be evidence-based and not driven by ideology,
bringing forward policies aimed at maximizing benefits and minimize costs.
Let's take the example of a classical Italian dish: la pasta col pomodoro.
Actually the origin of this dish is not Italian at all.
The invention of pasta as such is contended between Chinese and Arab people.
Tomato is not originary of Italy but it comes from South America.
Often people are anti-immigration because they want to protect their own culture and values.
Yet the roots of a tree, under the surface, have complicated and often-unpredictable shape
and can get until very far away from the tree itself.