In Milan, the site of the Winter Olympic Games, the mayor is taking steps to help migrants while the national governments seeks to discourage immigration.
EMILY KWONG, HOST:
The Winter Olympics in Italy comes to an end this weekend. For nearly three weeks, the Game’s host cities have embraced the global spotlight. But Milan, one of those host cities, is in the midst of another battle over the future of immigration in the country. While Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is doing all she can to keep migrants out, Milan is standing up to her policies. NPR’s Ruth Sherlock reports.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: (Speaking Italian).
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: It’s late on a night of freezing fog in Milan, and Diletta Tanzini, protection field officer with the International Rescue Committee, the IRC, and a translator are at the city’s central train station. They’re armed with a giant flask of tea, power banks and information to help migrants who’ve just arrived to Italy.
DILETTA TANZINI: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: Tanzini says, “people come here after crossing mountain ranges from the Balkans or the Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats from Africa.”
TANZINI: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: “By the time they reach Milan,” she says, “they sometimes have nothing left, not so much as a backpack of personal possessions.”
TANZINI: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: Tanzini passes hot drinks to three men who stand outside the train station looking cold and uncertain of where to go next.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Afghanistan. Nice to meet you.
TANZINI: Nice to meet you.
SHERLOCK: They’re from Afghanistan, and these are their first moments in Italy.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: They’ve been traveling for one year to get here. And they arrived today.
SHERLOCK: Nobody in our group speaks Dari or Pashto, but one of the Afghan men communicates through the IRC’s Arabic translator.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
SHERLOCK: “This journey involved cars, smuggler vans full of refugees,” he says.
TANZINI: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: Tanzini passes them gloves to protect from the cold and gives them information about a welcome center where they could soon find shelter. There are still procedures before they can access it, so they may have to spend tonight on the street, but there is at least somewhere where they could eventually stay.
TANZINI: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: “And this is a big gift by Milan Council,” Tanzini says. Even as Europe’s political climate darkens against refugees with the rise of right-wing parties in many countries, including Italy, Milan is trying to provide more services for migrants, even as the government cuts funds.
LAMBERTO BERTOLE: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: (Speaking Italian).
BERTOLE: (Speaking Italian).
I reached Lamberto Bertole, the health and welfare commissioner for Milan City Council, by phone, as he dashes between appointments.
BERTOLE: (Through interpreter) Milan is and wants to be an open and inclusive city. To close our borders and think that we can stop the flow of people and run a propaganda campaign against them is totally myopic.
SHERLOCK: The Meloni government funds the Libyan and Tunisian coast guards, both entities with documented human rights abuses, to try to stop the migrant boats coming from North Africa. But Bertole argues people from less fortunate countries will always find ways to come, and the difficulty of using legal routes means people take dangerous and clandestine journeys. And once in Italy, they then work in the black, meaning, he says, the state loses out on revenue from hundreds of thousands of possible taxpayers.
BERTOLE: (Through interpreter) The politics against migration are preventing Italy from properly handling the issue here. And this is a perverse decision because it pushes migrants to the margins of society, and this marginalization creates more strain within that society. And this only generates more fear, which encourages a government to try and close its borders more. So it’s a vicious circle.
SHERLOCK: He says Milan wants to help migrants get set up for a new life in Italy.
ANNA PEPE: Ciao.
TANZINI: Buongiorno. Buongiorno.
PEPE: Ciao.
SHERLOCK: To see this for ourselves, the council gives rare permission for us to go inside Casa dell’accoglienza Enzo Jannacci, a center that provides shelter for both migrants and Italians in need. The IRC and other organizations also run programs there.
PEPE: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: Anna Pepe, the center’s director, says they also try to assist migrants with the long bureaucracy of their asylum claims and help enroll them into the state health care system and their children into schools.
PEPE: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: “The goal is to assist people in building their own autonomous path,” she says.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: (Speaking Italian).
SHERLOCK: At a classroom in the center, an art teacher cuts out a large square of painting paper.
(SOUNDBITE OF CUTTING PAPER)
SHERLOCK: The room fills with people from all over the world, migrants from Peru, El Salvador, Afghanistan. Everyone here is going through a lot. And this class – it’s a chance to relax.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “FOR YOU”)
KHAID: (Singing in non-English language.)
SHERLOCK: There’s African music, songs from Latin America, all kinds.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I’m the dancer in the house.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Laughter).
SHERLOCK: And this very talented kid, 9-year-old Yacob (ph) from Tunisia, who’s already learned to rap in Italian.
YACOB: (Rapping in Italian).
SHERLOCK: The people I speak with here tell me that in Italy, they want to become photographers, lawyers and, like Leila (ph) from Nigeria, nurses.
LEILA: Everyone has a vision to have a better life. And I am still trying to have the better life (laughter).
SHERLOCK: Like everyone here, Leila doesn’t disclose her last name, fearing that speaking publicly could affect her asylum claim. She’s here with her 8-year-old son, a happy kid in a Spider-Man top, with a Spider-Man backpack, who spends time in the class painting – you guessed it – Spider-Man.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: It did look like the real Spider-Man.
SHERLOCK: Leila spent years trying to get to Europe. She eventually crossed the Mediterranean Sea while pregnant and with her son, then a toddler, by her side in a crowded smuggler’s boat from Libya. She then spent five years in Germany trying to get residency papers.
LEILA: I also integrated. I integrated for – I was doing a nursing training.
SHERLOCK: Nursing training – but Germany’s policy towards migrants hardened, and she watched friends be deported. She feared this would happen to her too.
LEILA: You imagine after taking a very long time to get to your dream country and be told that you will be deported back to your home country after fighting for years to get here.
SHERLOCK: Oh. It’s too painful. Yeah.
LEILA: It’s too painful because you fought to be here, and you aspired for a better life.
SHERLOCK: I ask how it feels to come to a country whose government is trying to keep people like her out.
LEILA: It’s nobody’s fault you were born in Africa. You just want a dream. I wasn’t given an option in heaven to choose the country to be born into. So yeah, I am born in Africa. So you just have to strive to get to where you ought to be.
SHERLOCK: Leila came to Milan because she said she heard from friends about this center and the help that she and her children could receive. In claiming asylum, she’s starting again. But this time, she hopes she and her children will have a good job and a good education and get to become integrated members of Italy’s society. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Milan.
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