“Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but despite everything I don’t complain. There are people who are worse off”: this is what Elza says, a young immigrant who despite having been in Italy for 13 years and being married to an Italian with whom she has two daughters, is unable to obtain Italian citizenship: discriminated against compared to EU citizens. Elza’s story is the same as that of many others, women and men who arrived in Italy from non-EU countries hoping for a better future. She is 37 years old, born in Kazan, the sixth most populous city in the Russian Federation, and has lived in Italy since 2006. She arrived here with the promise and hope of a better future, immediately after graduating in Engineering. She aspired to become a tour guide and instead she found herself to clean the stables of a riding school, and as an illegal immigrant, because the person who had promised her work in Italy had no intention of regularising her. So this young Russian woman worked about eighteen hours a day, for years, for only 400 euros a month. In hindsight she realized that it was a miserable wage, but at the time it seemed like a dream salary since it was about twice the average in her country.
But Elza never gave up on the hard work and that humble and underpaid job, over time she found a better job and after many sacrifices also love. She married an Italian boy and has two little girls. Hers would seem to be the classic story with a happy ending and in the end it is, but there is a but: Elza who today lives in the province of Alessandria does not yet have Italian citizenship. After a marriage, two daughters (born in Italy) and a second degree in Environmental Sciences obtained in Italy, she still cannot feel Italian. Today she is hostage to a cumbersome, long and very expensive bureaucracy, entirely paid for by immigrants. For this reason she is forced to periodically renew her residence permit at her own expense. Of course it is the long permit for family reasons, but it is still of inferior value to that granted to EU residents for work or political asylum. Among the various bureaucratic procedures, her two daughters have also lost the baby bonus, even though they are Italian citizens, and she is unable to finally find emotional, stable peace in a country where she has now lived for 13 years and feels like her own: for the Italian State, she is a non-EU citizen. “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, even though today I feel a little Italian,” she says. Then she looks at her family world, the one she has built with so many sacrifices, looks at her little girls and with a bitter smile adds: “Despite everything, I don't complain. There are people who are worse off.”
Marcella Aliberti
EDITORIAL TEAM
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