After Augusta, Pozzallo is the busiest transit center for migrants arriving from North Africa. In the year that is about to close, around 15 migrants are welcomed at the port's First Reception Center and immediately sent to other Sicilian structures. In the Iblea area there are currently about 900 places for adults and 200 for minors. A great effort for an area that has only 12 municipalities and a population of just over 300 inhabitants, but little given the numbers reached in the last two years by the migratory flow arriving from the North African coasts. Permanent presences in the area have now reached 24, with a six per cent increase compared to last year. A figure, in line with the national one, which makes Ragusa one of the most sought after areas, at least initially for those who choose to emigrate.
In 2015, one and a half million migrants set off for Europe. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 365 thousand have crossed the Mediterranean, almost 150 thousand have landed in the southern ports of the peninsula. Many refugees flee wars in the Middle East and Africa, others from hunger and dictatorships, but Somalis, Eritreans and Nigerians are growing strongly among the refugees who land in Sicily. The bulk of those fleeing the horrors of war in Syria are now taking the Balkan route by land.
At Christmas the situation was rather calm, 128 migrants were guests in the center of Pozzallo but the problem today has a new and precise name: hotspot. And we have seen these days that it is not a recent problem. In May, the European Commission launched new immigration policies, launching the idea of hotspots, a new point of reference for the repatriation and relocation of migrants on a European basis. Structures set up to identify, register, photograph and collect fingerprints of migrants. In practice, centers where to concentrate the first reception and carry out an initial screening to assess whether those who disembark have the right to international protection or whether they are economic migrants. For this second case, a rapid system for repatriations is triggered. Structures that the Financial Times defines as "temporary refugee camps", in which to welcome, and in case of resistance, detain, migrants waiting to establish whether they are candidates for relocation, repatriation, or asylum application in the first country of entry.
Lampedusa, Pozzallo, Trapani should have been the hotspots open as early as summer 2015, but only Lampedusa left in the summer. It must have had some problems since it has had very few dockings in recent months. Trapani has begun its adventure in recent days, Pozzallo perhaps in the next few weeks, according to the rumors. 2016 should be the turn of Porto Empedocle, Catania, Augusta and Taranto.
Europe is insistently asking Italy to speed up the opening of the hotspots, but the answers from the Interior Ministry sound rather embarrassed. In Sicily the structures are not adequate, the forces of order are unable to start the project which has undergone a series of stops given that the relocations of asylum seekers to European countries have been slow. In Pozzallo, the structure that should be transformed into a hotspot presents serious problems of space and equipment, but in other situations such as Porto Empedocle it is even worse: there is absolutely nothing. The tensile structure that stands on the pier, where refugees are hosted at the time of landing, has been declared unusable by the firefighters!
Brussels is asking for acceleration, and in this regard it considers the use of force to collect fingerprints or to detain migrants who resist longer is not unbecoming. So in simple terms, the hot spot provides for the deprivation of personal freedom of those who disembark, a ban on leaving the center, an exhaustive interrogation to distinguish between applicants for international protection and economic migrants. The logic is that of the old Centers for Identification and Expulsion (Cie) with the welcome that becomes reality for the few.
Functions that traditional reception centers have difficulty in starting and Pozzallo does not escape the rule. The former customs located close to the pier where migrants are disembarked is able to accommodate 180 people but does not go beyond that. The space is limited, for identification there is a small room, the functionality of the rooms and services is always precarious, despite the frequent and recent renovations and other spaces would be needed which the Customs will hardly allow to be used. But even if it were possible, the renovation project, tender, award and works would take several months. Not to mention the thorny problem of who should make the necessary money available. And precisely because it considers the center of Pozzallo completely inadequate, Doctors Without Borders has surprisingly announced that starting from 2016 January XNUMX it will leave Pozzallo.
Where she had landed two years ago, and for almost a year she had been active at the first reception center and had an important psychological support project in the extraordinary assistance centers in the province of Ragusa. An important presence was that of MSF which made use of a rotating team of 15 operators (doctors, nurses, psychologists and cultural operators) and which filled the numerous gaps in the public structure. For months, MSF had denounced that reception conditions in Pozzallo were below the minimum standards (promiscuity, unsuitable spaces, inadequate services and no doors, difficulties even for immediate treatments such as anti-scabies, to name the most blatant accusations). In a word, there is a lack of a welcoming model, in Pozzallo as or more than elsewhere, and the institutions all turn a deaf ear.
And if you are unable to operate a reception center in a dignified way, all the more so who knows what can happen with a hotspot. The new procedure provides for the strengthening of identification operations through the support of European Union officials alongside the police forces, new structures, spaces to detain those who do not provide personal details or awaiting repatriation or expulsion, it is difficult to be able to do everything in 600 square meters, formerly used as a dormitory and reception centre. Furthermore, according to the Interior Ministry, of the 144 foreigners who landed in 2015, forty thousand refused to undergo the procedures, especially Syrians and Eritreans who want to apply for asylum in other countries. And many of these have lost track of them, leaving overnight or fleeing from reception centers and starting a long journey of hope destined to take them to friends and relatives domiciled in other European countries.
Others didn't go that far. Ragusa, for example, will not be an Eldorado for residents but it is still a land of opportunities for those arriving from afar. 14 percent of the foreign population in Sicily resides in the Ragusa area, even if the overall balance is negative, almost a tenth of the resident population opts for emigration. Two parallel flows that do not touch: on the one hand there is the aspiration to find new and better job opportunities on the part of those who decide to leave, on the other there are those who are willing to work in areas that are not exactly rewarding, starting from occupations in the countryside or in greenhouses, and in any case of a medium-low level.
In the Hyblaeans, Tunisians are the largest foreign nucleus, 7.350, followed by Romanians, almost 7, then Albanians, just over 3. Not very representative are the Chinese who operate above all in the commercial field while the nationalities of Eastern Europe, Polish in the lead but female, work as carers. It is the agricultural triangle that occupies the vast majority of North Africans and Albanians, and some have even become small landowners.
