The "Ero Straniero - L'umanità che fa bene" (I Was a Foreigner - When Being Human Does Good) campaign, a collaborative effort by associations such as A Buon Diritto, ActionAid, ASGI, the Federation of Italian Evangelical Churches (FCEI), Oxfam, Arci, CNCA, CILD, and the Foundation Home of Charity "Angelo Abriani," along with Radicali Italiani, has collected signatures for a petition demanding a new law on residence permits and promoting social integration for migrants.

The campaign denounces the "very serious delays" in the implementation of the amnesty granted in 2020 by the Italian government for migrants to obtain a residency permit, particularly in the prefectures of Rome and Milan, where less than 60% of the requests have been examined,

The campaign underscores that "the lack of personnel is an emergency and both the Government and the Parliament must resolve this issue".

Resources needed to strengthen personnel

To tackle the personnel shortage, the Ero Straniero campaign asks for an amendment to the decree 133/2023, currently under discussion at the Camera dei Deputati, the lower chamber of the Italian Parliament, to "earmark and provide 105 million euros to strengthen the personnel serving in the prefectures and an additional 150 million euro for the personnel at the police stations, currently under discussion as part of the finance bill under different areas of expenditure."

According to the figures provided by the campaign Ero Straniero, until 21 September 2023 at the prefecture in Rome the number of requests examined "were only half of the total ones presented (55%) of the 17,371 requests presented with the 2020 amnesty.

Between January and April 2023, only 88 requests were examined, noting that the prefecture experienced a 44% reduction in staff in 2023 compared to the previous year.

'Thousands of files still need to be processed'

In Milan, out of 26,225 regularization requests received by the prefecture until July 2023, only "59.21% had been processed." Ero Straniero attributes this significant delay and backlog to a lack of personnel. The campaign once again condemns the "unacceptable stalling" concerning files stuck in Italian police stations and prefectures, impacting foreign nationals residing in the country. Three years after the adoption of the regularization measure in 2020, there are still thousands of requests that are being processed and thousands of people waiting to receive a reply, the campaign concludes.