Only a few hours after the Berlusconi Government approved the so-called "public safety laws", the immigrants who risk expelling already found the solution: a one-day trip in San Marino, an independent and sovereign state within the Italian borders. Jokes aside, several officials expressed their concern on the situation of the workers on the black market, since the low economic growth encourages employers to force immigrants to work without proper papers.
According to Berlusconi's initiative, immigrants who stay for more than three months in Italy without proving they have a residence and a monthly minimum legal income are to be expelled.
Regarding the Roma minority, the decree does not include new rules, except for rougher sentences for those who practice mendicancy involving children - up to 3 years in jail and decay from parental rights, in case the minors put to beg are their children.
Lawyer Giancarlo Germani, head of the Romanians' Party in Italy explains that the Romanians who fall under the incidence of the decree may very well return to Romania for a day, of go shopping for a day in san Marino, then they are allowed to return to Italy as any other community citizen, for another three months.
On the other hand, Costica Noru, official of the CNA World employers' association (where over 400 Romanian companies in Rome are recorded) declared that the authorities should first handle the problem of crime, then deal with the immigrants. 40 Romanian workers employed on a construction site were not allowed to work after some Roma minority members stole a crane cable. "It is the fourth time that cable is stolen since January and the Police did nothing", says Noru. At the same time, Noru warns that many employers prefer to pay workers on the black market and that those workers are not a public threat, still they can not prov
