Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni presented a complaint to the national anti-mafia prosecutor’s office to report an alleged maxi-fraud to “inflate” the entry of migrants into Italy by exploiting the system of flow decrees. Palazzo Chigi’s hypothesis is that the multi-year scam involves organized crime networks, in our country to “force” the system with thousands of fictitious applications, in third countries – in particular Bangladesh – to encourage mass departures towards our country. The complaint was delivered by the Prime Minister herself today 4 June to the National Prosecutor Giovanni Melillo. Meloni announced this this morning in a briefing to the CDM which was then released to the media. From the monitoring carried out by government offices on the application of the flow decrees – those which establish year by year the quotas of regular migrant entries for which companies can apply – “alarming data” emerged, the Prime Minister reconstructed. The alarm bell rang when we realized the exorbitant number of requests arriving from Campania during the pre-established click day. Numbers too far from the reality of the territory to not arouse suspicion: «On permits for seasonal work, i.e. for work in the agricultural or tourism-hotel fields, in 2023, out of a total of 282,000 applications, 157,000 arrive from Campania, while 20,000 arrive from Puglia . Except that, for example in the agricultural sector, Puglia has around 12% of Italian agricultural businesses and Campania only 6%”, explains the prime minister. Furthermore, according to what emerged, at the end of the process only 3% of those who had obtained a regular visa had actually signed an employment contract. Minor but significant gaps between the two data, according to monitoring, would come from many other Italian regions.
The assault on the system from Campania
According to the government, there is little doubt about what is behind such suspicious numbers: «In our opinion it means that the regular flows of immigrants for work reasons are used as a further channel of irregular immigration. It means that, reasonably, organized crime has infiltrated the management of applications and the “flow decrees” have been used as a mechanism to allow access to Italy, through a formally legal and risk-free route, to people who would not have had any access to Italy. right, probably upon payment of sums of money (according to some sources, up to 15,000 euros per “practice”)”. A criminal fraud which would see criminal organizations in Campania colluding with “partners” located primarily in Bangladesh, the country from which the highest number of arrivals of irregular migrants in Italy have come for months and where “buying and selling phenomena” have been reported by the authorities. of visas for work purposes”. Hence the government’s decision to create an ad hoc dossier now handed over to the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office for possible crime profiles.
Towards a review of the flow system
As for the political and regulatory level, Meloni now also wants answers from his own ministries. «We are faced with a mechanism of fraud and circumvention of the dynamics of regular entry, with the heavy interference of organized crime, which we must stop and correct, exactly as we have done, and are doing, for the super housing bonus and for the income of citizenship”, says the prime minister, intervening on a series of crucial but extremely “delicate” aspects of the system: verification of applications for work permits, the click day mechanism, the definition of quotas, the strengthening of entry channels special services, and more generally of collaboration with trade associations, with the aim of defining manpower needs. The Prime Minister announces a battle on the issue, to be launched with a “broad and detailed plan to resolve this problem” which will be presented in one of the first CDMs after the G7 in mid-June.
