MILAN — Three Afghan men stand together in the freezing fog outside of Milan's central train station on a recent night — their first moments in Italy. It took two of them a year of clandestine border crossings and journeys in smugglers' vans to get to this country where they will claim asylum.
The third Afghan man fled to here from Germany, where he had lived and learned the language for three years, before the government hardened its stance on irregular migration and allowed deportations of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Syria.
As Europe's political climate darkens against refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, with governments including that of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni focusing resources on limiting new arrivals, Milan is taking a stand for a different approach. The city, led by a mayor from a center-left political party, provides services and programs to try to integrate the people arriving into society.
"Milan is and wants to be an open city — open to the world and to change," says Lamberto Bertolé, Milan's commissioner for health and welfare. "This idea of Europe as a fortress that is closing is pointless because people find ways to enter anyway."
Meloni's government is spending tens of millions of euros to fund the Tunisian and Libyan coast guards to try to prevent irregular migration across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. These patrols sometimes use violent tactics to stop the smugglers' boats, endangering those on board. Many migrants are placed in squalid detention centers in Libya where the United Nations and human rights groups have documented the widespread use of torture and abuse.
The Italian government is also seeking ever greater restrictions on charities performing search and rescue missions to help migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
These efforts have reduced the number of people arriving in Italy by sea compared to 2023. But the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, finds that some 66,316 people still came to the country this way last year.
Bertolé in Milan says the government is leaving city councils to cope with the reality of migration in Italy. It has made it harder for certain migrants to access social integration programs, and has limited funds for the shelters. For example, Bertolé says Milan's city council has had to find housing and care for nearly 1,000 more unaccompanied migrant children than the state provides places for.
A survey from Italy's National Institute of Statistics in 2021 found that while foreign nationals made up about 9% of Italy's population, they made up almost 38% of those registered as experiencing homelessness.
"The Meloni government's policies push migrants to the margins of a society and this marginalization creates more strain within that society," Bertolé says. "This only generates more fear, which encourages the government to try to close its borders more. So it's a vicious circle."
In Milan, the primary site of the Winter Olympics, where visitors paid as much a 1,400 euros for some of the sporting events, homelessness is evident, with many people sheltering from the cold temperatures at night in wall nooks and outdoor seating areas of closed restaurants. This is despite a city program offering temporary shelter in cold periods.
When Diletta Tanzini, protection field officer with the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental aid organization, and translator Islam Abdelkarim Ramadan meet the three Afghan men newly arrived at Milan's central station during a regular night walk to help migrants, they give them cups of hot tea and warm gloves, and provide directions to a welcome center where they could find shelter. "This center is a big gift from the city council," says Tanzini.
Across town, in the southern outskirts of Milan, the municipality also funds Casa dell'Accoglienza Enzo Jannacci, a residential facility for more than 500 people that houses both migrants and Italians in need. It also helps migrants access state health care services in Italy and enroll children into local schools as their asylum claims are processed. "The objective is to help people build their own autonomous path," says Anna Pepe, the center's director.
In a classroom there, art teacher Albania Teresa cuts out large squares of painting paper and passes them to students. In the room are migrants from Peru, El Salvador, Afghanistan and Nigeria. An eclectic mix of African, Latin American and Western music blasts out from a speaker, and 9-year-old Yacob from Tunisia sings a rap in the Italian he has learned into NPR's microphone.
For some in the room this is a second attempt at settling in a European country. A Nigerian woman, who asks only to be identified as Leila, fearing that speaking to the media could affect her asylum claim, says she spent five years in Germany with her two children — now ages 8 and 5. Her 8-year-old son is in the class with her and becomes clearly frustrated as Teresa, the art teacher, addresses him in Italian, a language he doesn't yet understand.
In Germany, she and her son had "integrated," Leila explains, saying she had been learning German and training to become a nurse. But last year, when the country implemented stricter asylum measures, she watched friends get deported and feared this would happen to her and her children, too. She had spent years trying to come to Europe and had eventually crossed the Mediterranean in a smuggler's boat from Libya while pregnant with her daughter, and with her son, then a toddler, by her side.
"Imagine, after taking a very long time to get to your dream country and, to be told that you will be deported back to your home country after fighting for years to get here," she says. "It's too painful because you fought to be here."
Leila says she came to Milan because she heard from friends about this center and the help she and her children could receive.
By leaving Germany and claiming asylum in Italy, she's starting again. But this time, she hopes, she and her children will eventually settle.
Asked how she feels about doing this in a political climate in Europe where migrants are increasingly unwelcome, she replies: "I wasn't given an option in heaven to choose the country to be born into. Everyone has a vision to have a better life. And I am still trying to have that better life."
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