HELP FOR ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS?

Talking with different folks I learned about an immigrant advocacy group, Associazione Tolba, near Matera. I’m familiar with similar types of nonprofit groups from my graduate school days in Bologna in the mid-1990s, and I had looked around unsuccessfully for one of them in this area. The immigrants I’ve talked to never mentioned any such help but some had gotten a hand from CARITAS, a Catholic organization, when they first arrived in Avellino (the large city, the seat of the province, west of us).

Two weeks ago, at the weekly outdoor market in Cairano M and I started talking to one of the African street vendors. Sure enough, “A” (who has been in Italy for twenty years) pulls out a little photocopied flier for ANOLF (Associazione Nazionale Oltre Le Frontiere—National Association Beyond the Borders, or something like that)—an international organization supported by one of Italy’s largest unions. It just so happens, A told us, that he is a representative for the organization for the entire province of Avellino. The organization’s mission statement: “La diversità culturale è ricchezza, sconfiggere l’intolleranza ed il razzismo è civiltà” (Cultural diversity is wealth, defeating racism and intolerance is civilization). The flyer he gave me has contact information for him, but no one else.

A quick Google search and then a few conversations, both with immigrants and with Italian academics, has made me doubt the organization’s effectiveness. One academic told me “in many parts of Italy it’s just a sham. They receive tons of money and do nothing with it.” Then an immigrant from the former Soviet Union told me a disheartening story, the gist being that she was taken for 110 euro by this organization and didn’t even get the help she had gone looking for.

I hope these stories are either untrue or just anomalous, but I’ll have to see for my self.