Many irregular domestic workers paid dearly but they’ll not be regularised

 Tuesday, 19 October 2010

So many irregular immigrants who sought the help of intermediators in applying for regularisation last year will never be regularised.

In Milan and Rome where most applications were submitted, authorities are detecting serious problems with some applications. It is in fact now emerging that so many irregular immigrants were conned by intermediators who made them believe that they would help them find employers ready to regularise them.

Most of the intermediators were individuals from the same countries as their victims, service agencies and advocates (including those expelled from the professional body).so many irregular immigrants in Milan paid an average of 5000 Euros to intermediators for applications for regularization which will never be accepted. 

In Rome there are cases of people who paid up to 7,000 Euros. 

It is actually not easy to know the exact number of irregular immigrants who paid dearly in order to be regularized. Almost all irregular domestic workers who paid intermediators to help them find an employer to apply for their regularization, didn’t know who their “employer” was. Yet the fake employer declared that the domestic worker was living at his/her home.

Mr. Maurizio Improta of Rome’s Immigrations Office at the Prefecture told Il Messaggero newspaper that some of the intermediators used names of dead people, or casually picked up names from the yellow pages to submit fake applications.

They then used the receipt from the website of Ministry of Home Affairs to make their victims believe that they would be regularised before taking huge sums of money from them.

While there were fake employers who accepted money in order to submit applications for regularisation, many were victims of scam. Some employers who sought help from certain individuals in submitting applications for their workers later on discovered that other applications were submitted on their behalf without their knowledge.

They only discovered it when they received letters summoning them to report to the Immigrations Office at the Prefecture to complete the process of regularising the workers they didn’t know. That’s when many of them reported to the police, says Bovino.

Many of the applications submitted by these fake employers have either been rejected or will be rejected because some employers submitted more than the permitted number of applications.

Each family could only apply to regularize one housekeeper and at most two caregivers. But many of these fake employers submitted several applications. All the excess applications from each employer are being automatically rejected.

The fact that many irregular immigrants paid intermediators to help them find fake employers makes it difficult for them to either report the intermediators or recover their money. They in fact violated the law by paying people to make false declarations in order to regularise their stay in the country.

The question many are asking is, do these people have a chance of being regularised? “I don’t think so,” says Bovino. “Those who personally reported the intermediators to the police were given expulsion orders while those who sought help of advocates in reporting them have slim chances of obtaining the Permit of Stay for Justice. Yet, many advocates are encouraging them to do so hoping that they’ll be given the Permit of Stay for Justice, which they can later on convert into work permit, but the law doesn’t provide for this.”