Ablaye Fall left the Senegal because he was in Senegal male. Rampant poverty, an uncertain future, sick parents, lack of work. Ablaye would have liked to take a airplane to come to Europe. It would cost less. It would have cost a few hundred euros. Certainly not 2 thousand euros like the big one voyagego first terra and then on barge. But Ablaye couldn’t get on the plane. He didn’t even try to to knock to one of the European embassies to obtain a visa, perhaps only tourist. Because she already knew – as everyone knows Africans aspiring migrants – that the European embassies, those visas there they deny summarily.
Traveling is impossible if you weren’t born in the right country. Senegal, in this sense, is certainly not a just country. Italy, on the other hand, does. Exist passports of series A and series B passports, as the Passport Index classification extensively reports. With the passport Italian Yes they can visit 174 countries. With the passport senegalese only 66, almost all in Africa, none in Europe. With the passport somali 44 countries, including Haiti, Maldives, Mozambique, Malaysia. No nation in Europe. If you were born in Africa, only in Africa will you be able to travel. With the passport Syrian you can visit 38 countries, ditto with the passport afghan. Many Syrians and Afghans would like run away from the war and the Taliban but they simply can’t do it, at least legally. Or rather, they can get to Europe for illegal ways and then, once here, ask for a view humanitarian. But first they have to to risk life overcoming borders, walls, seas and spend thousands of euros. And so proliferate the human traffickers, who get paid handsomely for migratory routes where they risk death. Just as happened to the migrants shipwrecked off the coast of Crotone.
Just like happened to Ablaye, arrived for miracle in Lampedusa. «My boat broke down, we were 120 peoplethey survived only 62. I saw a two year old girl die drowned in front of mom, I saw her right in front of mine eyes. I saw my compatriot to disappear inside the sea, before he died he had left me the number of telephone of his mother and that of his father, to warn them in case he died. Today Ablaye is a guest in a centre hospitality of the Il Girasole cooperative in the province of Florence. She started working as tailor and every month he sends money home. He does not forget the Mediterranean: «I still dream about those at night moments in the middle of the sea, sometimes I can’t sleep».
Next to him is Kwasi Amankwa, Ghanaian: «I was two years in LibyaI worked in Tripoli, then the Libyans imprisoned me, they have me tortured, they bathed my body and whipped me on the back. Then I started with a bargewe were 150 on board, there are only 15 left, the others are all dead, I saved myself because I know how to swim». Even Kwasi would have preferred to travel in comfort airplanebut when he hears about air travel he laughs: «For us Africans it is impossible traveling by plane, they don’t issue visas, unless you’re rich».
The requirements to have a visa are almost impossible and hold up for most applicants migrants. The traveler who wants to enter Italy is required, for the purpose of issuing a visa, aMedical insurance of 30,000 euros valid for the Schengen countries for the reimbursement of medical expenses, assistance and repatriation in the event of death or illness. And then there’s the even more part difficile. You need proof of availability sufficient means to bear the costs of stay. The evidence required can be, for example, the bank statements of the previous six months. And above all, it requires one documentation justification of one’s socio-professional status. In fact, it is required that the aspiring migrant be wealthy. And that is why, in most cases, i visas are not granted.
It is therefore impossible enter regularly in Italy, except with the flows decree, the measure that in the last twenty years has brought about one million of foreigners and which in the aftermath of the Cutro tragedy, the Meloni government has promised to strengthen (without however providing numbers of possible entries). «But the flow decree also works with the dropper – said Nazzarena Zorzella, lawyer of Asgi (Association of legal studies on immigration) – It is a difficult instrument implementation because it crosses sight unseen the supply and demand of work, i.e. the Italian employer must hire one of its own employees who is still at home, therefore without actually knowing him, in fact he must hire him at distance. But it is complicated for an entrepreneur to hire remotely, without any knowledge and guarantees”.
And it happens that often the mechanism it does not work as it should, both because many countries are excluded from the flows decree, and because most of the entries are for one type of seasonal work. In addition to the fact, the employers denounce, that there are bureaucratic delays that make it difficult to issue the zero buy which often arrives months after the request.
– Traffickers and migrants, because the flow decree does not stop the departures of Domenico Affinito and Milena Gabanelli
