Post date: Jan 13, 2014 3:5:18 PM
Sicily has a higher number of asylum-seekers because of its location in the south of Italy. In 2011, a reception centre was set up to provide asylum-seekers with a place to live while their applications were processed. There are now 4,000 people at the centre, waiting up to a year for a decision on their applications.
CATANIA, SICILY, ITALY (UNHCR) - In the middle of the Sicilan countryside, multi-colored houses joined by paved roads, create the impression of a quiet suburb. But this is no ordinary suburb, it houses one of Europe's largest reception centres for asylum seekers.
Cara Mineo was created in 2011 as an emergency response to the influx of migrants from acrossAfrica and the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring.Economic hardship, uncertainty and war have kept the numbers up particularly here in Sicily, which has one of the highest numbers of pending asylum cases in Italy.
Over 4,000 people live in Cara Mineo waiting to be processed which can take anything from six months to a year.
Mohamed, left his home country Senegal and spent months crossing the Sahara desert to get toLibya. But when war broke out in Libya, he no longer felt safe. He left Libya in November last year.
His roommates are from Mali and Nigeria. They're all lucky to have survived their journeys toEurope but many don't. Only one month before Mohamed's journey, an overcrowded boat carrying over 500 Eritrean migrants sank off the coast of Lampedusa.
Lampedusa, midway between Sicily and Tunisia, has been the centre of a chronic migration crisis which has worsened due to turbulence in the Middle East and Africa and the civil war in Syria.
Tens of thousands of desperate immigrants, most fleeing poverty and upheaval in search of a better life in Europe have braved the hazardous sea crossing from North Africa to Lampedusa. Thousands have died in the attempt.
"Africans lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea. So that is very painful. It's very painful in the world. Everybody has seen it. So still we see what the Italian government did for those black people. They go inside the sea and rescued most of people who alive and those who lost their life they take the body outside. And they take their body back to their country. We are very happy for that the Italian government has done all these things. But we need documents," said Mohamed.
Many immigrants arrive first on Lampedusa and are then transferred here to Cara Mineo.
"Most people I met in this camp, most of them have spent two or three years; no papers, so they should guarantee us freedom [to work] and give us papers so we can leave this place," said one of Mohamed's roommates, a Nigerian asylum seeker who chose to remain unnamed.
Denise is a Cara Mineo community leader. Today, she is receiving a petition from the residents. Conditions inside many of Italy's immigration centres have prompted domestic and international criticism. Immigrants complain they are often housed in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
"Some people have been staying here for nine months, ten months and day in and day out people are coming inside and no-one is going out and it is making a big violence. We can see the camp is full of people. Everywhere is full," said another unidentified asylum seeker.
"People are here six, eight, nine, ten months it is not easy because every single one of them has their story and the Commission calls maybe only ten people a day. My job is very, very hard because if I look in his eyes, I see myself and I would like some answers correctly for them," added Denise.
Residents of Cara Mineo try to find ways to make some extra money by setting small businesses. Blessing arrived from Nigeria nearly three years ago. She set up a small shop in her front room to help her earn a living. Her asylum request was rejected twice but she recently heard that she has finally been accepted.
"So now they give me one year documents because I have waited a lot of time here, so now I am going to leave the camp next week, they have looked for a place for me to stay with me and my baby," said Blessing.
Italy's immigration policies are ill-equipped to deal with the thousands of immigrants who show up -- with scant identification and on rickety boats -- on its southern shores.
Rules dating to 2009 make entering without proper documentation a crime, requiring officials to report clandestine migrants.
During the first 11 months of 2013, 40,244 illegal migrants reached Italy by boat, almost four times as many as a year earlier, according to charity, Save the Children.
The number living in Italy is not known with any precision, but the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has estimated that, alongside the 5 million legal immigrants, there could be as many as 750,000 illegal ones.