Italy Seeks to Pass Problem on to EU Partners

As protests rage throughout northern Africa, young men crowd onto small vessels to cross the Mediterranean for Italy. For 23,000 Tunisian immigrants, Italy’s interior minister negotiated a deal with Tunisia to grant six-month residence permits. Criminals or those with a record of deportation, as well as those who arrived after the initial wave or are not from Tunisia, will be turned away, explains Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, writing for Spiegel Online. The permits give the immigrants enough time to keep moving north toward France, Germany – effectively transferring immigration-enforcement decisions to other jurisdictions. France responded by imposing border checks, a possible violation of EU law that grants legal migrants mobility. Italy’s program carries a label “culture of travel” and is described as “humanitarian.” With no long-term mechanism to ease Africans’ desire to escape their troubled homelands and enter more secure Europe, the policy has flaws, writes Schlamp. Meanwhile the flow of illegal immigration from the troubled region would continue. – YaleGlobal