Topic: Rights of Immigrants
Country: Italy
Delegate Name: Caroline Sawatzki
School: Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Italy position papers GLIMUN 2012 committees
Immigration is becoming an increasingly pressing issue worldwide. Although Italy will protect and uphold foreigner’s right to seek asylum (as defined in articles 31 and 32 of Law 189/2002, article 10, section 3 of The Italian Constitution, and legislative decrees 251 (2007) and 25), and will welcome those who are granted refugee status as defined by the Geneva Convention, it recognizes the need for uniform immigration control to prevent an influx of immigrants to any one nation due to discrepancies in regulation. Many nations, including Italy, are struggling with potentially crippling economic downfall. As a result, national resources are strained; many nations are incurring increasingly high amounts of debt, and many citizens are unemployed. This leads to concerns about undocumented laborers occupying jobs which would otherwise be offered to citizens of the nation. This is why it has become a priority within Italy to prevent masses of undocumented citizens from moving into Italy. Measures have been taken within Italy to regulate and control immigration, such as legislation which clarified the process of requesting asylum (legislative decrees 251 (2007) and 25 (2008) in accordance with the Geneva Convention), and laws such as the Bossi-Fini law (law 189 of July 2002) which regulates many aspects of immigration including residence contracts, the admittance of skilled and non-skilled European Union workers for work purposes, and conditions under which a permanent residence agreement may be reached.
Although such extensive measures have been taken to regulate immigration within the nation, a United Nations-mandated plan targeting immigration would help nations to move forward as a collective group to fix this problem. Italy is looking to collaborate with other nations in order to establish a working system of regulations that are both humanitarian in nature, but also provide adequate restrictions on immigration to nations that do not wish to receive immigrants. These regulations should also allow nations to decide which citizen-specific privileges should be denied to undocumented residents of the nation, such as participation in the democratic process or benefiting from government assistance, so long as the treatment of the immigrants is morally and ethically responsible. It should also note that nations not be required to grant citizenship to any one person or group of people, regardless of the duration of their residence.
