The best solution to Italy’s illegal immigration problem is for the government to increase its border patrol, and to make sure that all immigrants that are caught are deported back to their own countries.  The first thing that needs to be done is to detain all illegal immigrants as soon as they apprehended. Often times, for various bureaucratic reasons,  these people cannot be immediately deported for whatever reason, the Italian police force and coast guard needs to make sure that  they are not released into Italy, free to then go where they want.  Along with this, the amount of patrollers in the coast guard and border patrol needs to be increased.

This is the best solution because right now because it would be the best first step in solving Italy’s problem.  This solution would ideally put a stop to the constant heavy flow of illegal immigrants into the country.  If more people are caught and deported upon trying to enter Italy illegally, it may deter others from trying to do the same.  Plus, if less try to come over illegally, there will probably then be fewer deaths en route to Italy from places like northern Africa, which has been a huge problem in recent years.

One of the other solutions had been to focus more closely on the violence and racism problems in the country.  Xenophobia in Italy is in large part caused by the fact that much of the crime in the country is committed by poor immigrants that have come over illegally.  Because these people have no jobs and no money, many of them have become involved in crime rings and prostitution in order to make a living.  Italy has the third highest ration of documented foreigners to aliens (undocumented, illegal foreigners) in their prison system in the world, 14:2 (Zincone, 2).  If the flow of illegal immigrants can be curbed, there will be less of a chance that these minority groups will be singled out for negative reasons like committing crimes, because those foreigners that are in the country will be able to get normal jobs and ideally stay out of trouble.

For the implementation of this solution, the Italian government must be willing to spend some money in order to get rid of this problem.  First of all, it will have to hire more officers to police its borders, especially the coastlines.  But, one of the other problems is that these officers are not following the correct procedures of what is supposed to be done when immigrants are caught trying to enter the country illegally.  These officers need to be given incentives for following procedure, like an increase in their salary.  This is something that will cost Italy money at first, but eventually it will be worth it overtime, reducing crime, decreasing the size of the informal economy, and possibly reducing xenophobia in the long run.

Some ways that this solution can be monitored for its effectiveness in the future is for the government to keep track of how many people it is capturing versus deporting, the number should even out, or come close.  The amount of people dying en route to Italy on the seas should decrease as well.  This number might take some time to change, because for these people to stop trying to come over on boats, they will first have to realize that if they do make that long trip and are caught, that they will definitely be deported.  Right now the risk of possibly being caught is outweighed by the thought of being able to live in Italy or to get out of their country.  The number of crime related incidents by foreigners should decrease as the number of foreigners without jobs deceases, because the ideal situation will be that everyone in the country is there illegally, so they may find a job and stay out of trouble.  One last way to monitor the effectiveness of this solution will be to look at the number of workers in the informal sector of the economy in future years. This number should decrease as the amount of people that do not have work permits decreases.