The Chains of a Fake Reception

“We can’t stay calm because the burden we carry is too heavy. We are in a limbo, we are stuck between heaven and hell and the waiting is destroying us. The endless length of the processes is doing nothing except keeping us in chains, and we are forced to say ‘yes’ to everything just to be able to get a single piece of bread to feed our children and wives”.

These are the words of Bamba who describes his situation as what he calls a man in prison, with clenched fists, his voice breaking from being emotionally overcome, and a sad and hopeless face, like many of the other men and women we have met between Palermo and Trapani during the last few days.

Monitoring some CAS in the provinces of Palermo and Trapani

We visited three extraordinary reception centers (CAS*) that are run by the cooperative Vivere Con in Marsala, Consortium Era in Balestrate, and Liberitutti in Partinico. We did not have the time to visit another CAS in Marsala that is run by the cooperative Arca, as it has been closed down by the prefecture due to irregularities that had been found.

We have seen and met a lot of asylum seekers who are scared of the future and who are sick and tired of being trapped between four walls. In some cases, the judicial proceedings to attain international protection has been going on for up to six years, a fact witnessed by people who have been in different CAS since 2014. These are people who only live a half life, not being able to help their families back home, even though the people working at the centers are trying and have become almost like a real family in some cases. These people are well aware that, on the one hand, they have a place to stay and food to eat but, on the other hand, they are stalled given the fact that no one gives them a job even though they legally are allowed to work.

Many employers take advantage of this social invisibility to exploit those who are forced to take any work to gain even a little bit of money. An example for this is Drissa who has a degree in engineering. He says that this situation feels like a loss of dignity: “I assure you that it is really causing agony: We can’t send money home to our children and we ask ourselves again and again when all of this will end. And we cannot even think about going out for a drink every now and then like other people do. This is no life, so we allow other people, who insult us and think themselves superior to us, to exploit us. But for 10 Euros we are willing to endure all of this”.

Some of these people have contracts for a small job thanks to the people who work at the centers and who are looking for an institution, a friend, an association that take charge of one or two people. However, this is a case-by-case situation, as the general rule seems to be to only do what is necessary, because economic resources, and thus even wages often arrive up to a year later. Because of this it is difficult to set up projects that help these people with integration into society or with seeking employment. On top of this there is the fact that the lawyers often do not do well on their jobs.

As Mamadou tells us: “Laws are great if there are the circumstances to put them into practice. In every home parents set up rules for their children but we have laws and rules that keep us in chains – after having waited for four years for an answer by the court, I am living in a small town where only few speak Italian and no one wants to pay taxes to the government with the result that no one gets a contract. This way exploitation becomes the norm”.

It has been three days full of meetings after which we ourselves carry a heavy burden. Many people are aware that all of this is people profiting off their backs. And we are also part of this system, says Said angrily, because we ask them how they are doing and how the center is working without changing the situation. They remain still locked in a room.

The situation of the reception system

On the topic of business, what is the ministry of the interior doing to try to improve the situation?

In a successful country, people would be given the opportunity to leave this invisibility behind, to cast off their chains. Instead we offer ever higher benefits to companies to entice those who have not yet applied to run a center, however, without offering additional services for the asylum seekers living there.

How dire the situation in the reception centers is can be seen by observing the decisions of the local and national institutions, which defeat any logic. For example, minors are kept at the FAMI* centers for a long time (over 30 days) before being relocated to other regions although there are empty spots at locations nearby.

The employees of the CAS San Francesco in Palermo, which was run by the cooperative Badiagrande and has been closed down by now, have not received their salaries for the past four months and the inhabitants of the center, who have been relocated by now, have not received their pocket money. Badiagrande however is still competing for grants by the prefecture and is considered a top choice for the hotspot of Pozzallo. At the same time, they have handed over running the hotspots on Lampedusa to Nova Facility, a company from Triest. The detention center (CPR*) in Milo was closed down after a fire and the people were relocated to Gradisca d’Isonzo.

The situation is not much better in the immigration offices of police stations: In Palermo, a lawyer denounced the inhuman conditions of waiting outside on the streets, which did not spare even an eight-month pregnant woman, who was not even granted a chair.

The borders are being closed down, the controls are becoming even stricter: Germany and France are using scanners and drones at the borders to track down people and send them back while the sea is doing the dirty work for us, in its deafening silence. Such as the silence that surrounds the death of 14 people, among them two children, off the coast of Morocco.

And today again, we continue to condemn that the safety decrees are still put into practice, while the catastrophic effects on human lives are increasing day by day. There are still no clear measures to abolish the unconstitutional laws, but only useless proclamations, like the one calling for unlikely amnesty, that are nothing but deception and speculation on the backs of those who have suffered enough.

Alberto Biondo
Borderline Sicilia

*CAS: Centro di accoglienza straordinaria – Extraordinary reception center
*CPR: Centro di permanenza per il rimpatrio – Detention and repatriation center
*FAMI: Fondo asilo migrazione e integrazione – Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund

Translation by Annika Schadewaldt