Italy: League rails against new migrant center in Piedmont

Rome: A new migrant reception center due to open in early September in Italy’s northern region Piedmont has sparked negative reactions from Italy’s far-right party, The League. The former hotel will host 33 people waiting for a response on their asylum requests.

Members of The League party have expressed their concerns over the opening of the new reception center in Gravellona Toce in the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola province.

“The expected opening in Gravellona Toce of a migrant reception center is, in our opinion, ill-advised. Immigrants with their documents in order add value, while clandestine ones do not,” said Enrico Montani, the provincial secretary for The League party in Verbano-Cusio-Ossola.

He added that, in the same area where months ago another reception center opened, “in the days immediately after the arrival of the migrants, there were a series of anomalous cases of theft that do not seem to have been of a professional nature.”

Montani also expressed concern that “the heart of a city … already has a high per capita crime rate,” linking the presence of asylum seekers to crime.

The exact date of when the center, which will be housed in the former Sant’Antonio hotel, will open has not yet been announced.

The migrants to be housed at the center, however, are individuals who have been in the area for months already, said Chiara Fael from the Verbania prefect’s immigration office.

“Of these 33 people, 30 have jobs and three are seeking training,” she told the ANSA news agency in response. “They are already integrated and have never caused problems.”

The new migrant reception center will host only a maximum of 33 foreign nationals who have requested asylum or humanitarian protection and are still awaiting the outcome of their applications.

The center will be managed by a cooperative that for the past few months has been managing similar facilities in Brovello Carpugnino, in the same province.