Italian residents of Ladispoli are calling for a limit on the number of Soviet Jews and other foreign refugees allowed temporary housing in the seaside town.
So far about 3,000 signatures, representing about one-fifth of Ladispoli’s Italian population, have been gathered on a petition circulated by a group called “For Ladispoli.”
The group organized a protest demonstration Sunday.
“We are an opinion movement, without any political manipulation,” said shopkeeper Franco Pierotti, 42, one of the promoters of the initiative, in an interview with the Rome newspaper II Messaggero. “Our sole aim is to get a regulation of the (flow of ) foreigners. The collection of signatures is just the first step.”
However, the deputy mayor of the town, Crescenzo Paliotta, told the newspaper La Repubblica that he was worried that activists of the neo-fascist party MSI were involved in “For Ladispoli.”
Thousands of foreign refugees are housed in Ladispoli, taking advantage of Italy’s open-door policy while they await immigration visas for elsewhere. The town has thousands of small, empty apartments ordinarily used as vacation homes or summer rentals.
Currently refugees make up as much as one-third of the town’s population. By far the largest group in Ladispoli are the 4,000 Soviet Jews. But there are also hundreds of Poles, Egyptians, Afghans, Iranians, Ethiopians, Tamils and Soviet Pentacostals.
“For Ladispoli” wants to limit the number of refugees to 1,500.
Local officials for months have complained that the influx of refugees has strained the town’s public services to the breaking point. Town authorities earlier this year appealed to the Interior and Foreign ministries and also to the Jewish relief organizations that help the refugees to settle them in other towns as well as Ladispoli.
Officials of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee responded on Jan. I by directing Jewish refugees to other Italian cities.
According to a JDC spokesman in New York, the majority of the 11,000 Soviet Jews in Italy are in fact being housed in cities other than Ladispoli.
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