By Nicola Pedrazzi*
It’s 19,000. It’s either in articles or TV programs or just statuses on social media. When it comes to Italian immigrants in Albania, this is the figure we are now used to seeing.
But where did this number come out of. And above all, has anybody ever verified it? The magical confession of “flows changing sides” has been in fashion for a long time now on Italian media, but the first article that dared to provide the phenomenon’s figures dates back to October 2014; it was published online (and went viral) by Corriere Della Sera. The source that the author took care of putting in inverted commas is Albanian. It was Erion Veliaj, the then minister for social welfare and current Tirana mayor.
The following is the paragraph featured.
“There are 19,000 Italians living and working in our country,” estimates Erion Veliaj, the Albanian minister for Social Welfare and Youth of the Socialist Party-led government of Edi Rama. Removing diplomats and students registered in the catholic university of Our Lady of Good Counsel, take the number of those who have a job contract to 15,000 to 16,000.”
As the Corriere Della Sera article mentions, the same as happens in Italy with all non-EU citizens, even foreigners who want to stay longer than three consecutive months in Albania, are obliged to apply for residence permits: for work, study or family reunion reasons. In other words, except for diplomats, an Italian who regularly works or studies in Albania has the obligation of appearing to the police commissariat and prove that they fulfil the criteria envisaged by law. Italian pensioners who dream of a cheap third age (and tax free) across the Adriatic know something, but their project often runs counter to the Albanian government, the same to other countries around the world, where pension-income is not a sufficient criterion to make them eligible to the residence in their territory.
Official data by the Albanian interior ministry
Based on Albanian legislation, if it is true that 19,000 Italians “live and work in Albania, then all 19,000 Italians citizens must have applied and obtained residence permits by Albanian authorities. And this is the flaw, because according to the latest report published by the Interior Ministry and the Social Welfare Ministry (the latter run by Veliaj when the 19,000 figure went viral), there were 8,692 foreigners with residence permits, of whom only 1,694 Italians. According to the same report, there were 12,519 foreigners in Albania on January 1, 2017, accounting for 0.4 percent of the population. Among them, there were 1,854 Italians, fewer than a tenth of the figure taken into account by Italian media.
In a nutshell, “the exodus of 19,000 Italians” described by Corriere della Sera in 2014, cannot be achieved even by adding to the Italians the number of foreigners of other nationalities resident in Albania in 2017. There were 3,954 Turks, 719 Kosovars, 331 Chinese, 184 Syrians…
In conclusion and in order to avoid misunderstandings: It is possible and imaginable that the number of Italian citizens resident in Albania is bigger than the residence permits issued by the police commissariats. For different reasons, there are people who for example, commute between the two countries or people who never applied for a residence permit. And if everything has to be told, there are also “repatriated Albanians” living in Albania who now hold Italian citizenship.
If we also want to count them, let’s do it! The problem is that whatever criteria is chosen to excessively round up the figures, the famous 19,000 figure remains incompatible and far away from official data.
Fake news for a good intention?
If we don’t want to believe that the Albanian Ministry of Interior publishes fake data and if we don’t want to believe that more than 17,000 Italians illegally live in Albania with no residence permits, there is only one conclusion that remains. In 2014, Erion Veliaj provided exaggerated data, which important Italians newspapers took for granted without never checking them. Why?
Veliaj’s reasons are understandable; in May 2014 when he first provided the figure to ANSA news agency, he was in Rome to meet his counterpart Poletti. The Albanian minister’s goal was opening negotiations on a bilateral agreement on pensions, a ‘historical’ problem in Italian-Albanian relations, because if an Albanian citizen leaves Italy before meeting the minimum retirement criteria, they lose all the social security contributions they have paid in Italy (there is no deal yet between the two governments). Considering the high level of Albanian immigration to Italy, it was in the interest of minister Veliaj to inflate the figures of Italians in Albania and lay the foundations for negotiations: if you recognize the Albanians’ social security contributions in Italy, we will recognize the contributions Italians have paid in Albania. Even if the ‘white lie’ arises in this context, its life-expectancy is attributed to a deeper reason that involves the idea of a new Albania, envied and desired by those who for decades have linked its name to speedboats and their drivers. It is a propaganda stream in line with the Rama governments: a strategy that targets recovering the country’s international image and is addressed to foreign entrepreneurs and Albanians in the Diaspora, who thanks to this policy finally enjoy a positive stereotype and one day, maybe they could pay off, by voting abroad as the Socialist majority claims.
Albanians and the migrants’ vote
Out of the country’s 2.9 million residents (adults and minors), some 3.5 million Albanians are eligible to vote in the voter lists. Considering the big size of the Albanian Diaspora and that only 1.5 million people voted last year, it is more than evident that recognizing the vote of Albanians who live abroad is not a technical but a political issue. When it becomes a reality, and above all, if the Italian model (that recognizes a limited number of MPs for residents outside Italy) is not chosen, the consent of half a million of Albanian residents in Italy would gain a significant weight in the political race on home soil.
That is why Albanian politicians care for the image they show in front of the world and that’s why the attention that the Italian media shows to Albanian politicians is not politically harmless (we should consider the fact that Italian is a popular language in Albania).
The most difficult part to understand is the reasons behind the Italian naivety. Excluding a news portal that also publishes in Italian, but is registered in Tirana, no voice from this side of the Adriatic has criticized the figures issued by Albanian politics, even though the data by AIRE (The Register of Italians Resident Abroad) were very clear as confessed by the Italian ambassador to Tirana, Alberto Cutillo who said that there were 1,385 Italians as of January 1, 2017. Not wanting to elaborate on the deterioration of Italian politics and journalism, a bigger problem compared to a single episode, the unimaginable ease to which Italy believed the figures with no verification, is in the concrete case supported on two typical flaws in Italian-Albanian relations. Firstly, carefree lack of interest by the Italian side toward “real Albania” (a country which we have often dealt with, but relying on ourselves and our emotions, without asking ourselves to understand it, either in the Fascist era, under communism or now under democracy). Meanwhile, the second flaw is related to the symbolic and unforgettable value that the “Albania of Immigrants) holds in the collective Italian imagination. That is why, in order to show our crisis (and not the Albanian progress) we have pleasantly returned to the joke that “We are the Albanians now.” That is a parallel that does not respect history that comes to mind and that a clever Albanian politician, seemingly an expert of his neighbors’ mentality, pleasantly suggested, convinced that we would buy that.
A rhetorical friendship
Let’s be clear: Italian immigration in Albania remains a novelty on record. It is true that our entrepreneurs visit the country often, it is true that planes to Tirana fly every day from the main Italian airports, it is true that every year, dozens (or hundreds? Anybody knows the real figures?) of students who fail the entry exam to the faculty of medicine in Italian universities, get enrolled with Our Lady of Good Counsel; it is true that Italian tourism is at an exponential growth; it is true that after the earthquake, a restaurant owner from L’Aquila was reborn in Tirana; in a few words it is true that the today’s Adriatic is a porous border, especially if we bring to mind the eras of the Iron Curtain and Enver Hoxha’s regime. Everything is true, and whoever wants to asses this novelty, is welcome: everything is ‘positive’! And yet, no official data allows us to admit that 19,000 Italians permanently “live and work” in Albania. Continuing to repeat this is offensive to our profession, while politically it does not improve relations between the two countries, it does not help in Albania’s recognition in Italy, it does not overcome stereotypes, it does not honor Albanians and neither helps them feel better after decades of difficulties – to whom it may concern, the Albanian problems and immigration is not over, and a look to the figures of asylum seekers around Europe can prove that.
It is desperate to admit it, but this rhetorical Italian-Albanian friendship, void and fake like the figures we confess it with, is worth it only to provide some media oxygen to the government officials beyond the Adriatic: politicians in difficulty despite the beautiful image they sell to Albanians who don’t live in Albania, ‘friendly’ politicians who in this decisive stage of the European path would be in huge need of a serious partner across the Adriatic, but to whom Italy is recently reserving only selfies with fake enthusiasm. One doubts this is happening because we don’t have what else to offer.
*The author is a historian, journalist and expert of Italian-Albanian relations
The article originally appeared in Italian on Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso; Translated by Tirana Times from Albanian)
