Italy stats show sharp drop in stay permits and protection

Rome: A report by the Italian national statistics institute shows a plunge in the number of stay permits issued to non-EU nationals from 2022 to 2023.

In 2023, some 330,730 new stay permits were issued in Italy: a 26.4 percent drop compared with the previous year.

These numbers were released on October 3 by the Italian national statistics institute (ISTAT) in a report on non-EU nationals in Italy in 2023.

This drop, according to the report, is due mainly to a sharp drop in stay permits for asylum and international protection purposes, which decreased from over 200,000 in 2022 to about 106,000 in 2023: a 47.6 percent reduction.

This decrease was affected by a drop in the number of special permits for temporary protection issued to Ukrainian nationals after the war broke out, from 149,000 to 21,000.

The number of work permits decreased last year, while ones for family reunification rose slightly.

In 2023, almost 39,000 stay permits were issued for work purposes, a drop of 42.2 percent compared with the previous year.

Permits for work purposes accounted for 11.8 percent of new ones issued in 2023, according to the ISTAT report.

Some 32.8 percent of the cases – almost 13,000 of first issuances – were for stay permits issued following the regularisation measure issued in 2020 (D.l. 24/2020), the report stated.

The decrease in permits for work is due in part to a lower share of permits for regularisation of undeclared work, which in 2022 accounted for 72.6 percebt of work permits but which in 2023 were no longer affecting entrance flows.

There were 3.6 million non-EU nationals with a regular stay permit as of 31 December 2023. Ukrainian nationals were the largest number, exceeding Albanians and Moroccans.

During 2023, the number of stay permits granted for reasons of study rose by 9.4 percent compared with 2022, exceeding 27,000: a level that had not been recorded since 2013.

The number of new stay permits for students accounted for 8.3 percent of the total, ISTAT noted.

The largest number of students that decided to study in Italy in 2023 were: Iran (4,209), China (3,779), Turkey (2,074), India (1,785), the Russian Federation (1,241), and the US (1,091).

In 54.3 percent of the cases, stay permits for study purposes were granted to female students, more of whom came from the Russian Federation and the US and fewer of whom came from India and Pakistan last year.