NCFCA Policy Debate: SPRAR (NEG)

SPRAR (Italian acronym for “Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers”) is a 16-year old Italian policy that helps integrate migration flow but was changed in 2018.   (AFF will say it was changed due to lack of funding, but this brief will show it was for other reasons.)   SPRAR provides housing and other social services to immigrants whose asylum applications have been accepted, giving them time to learn the language, find employment, etc.  It is sometimes referred to as “second line” reception or accommodation.  (First line is initial processing and holding of the migrant before their case is processed and before their claim is approved or rejected.  It might be under harsher conditions, since they immigrated illegally and may have to be deported.  In Italy, the first-line programs are “CAS” and “CARA.” Once an immigrant goes through one of those, and submits his asylum application, he could go to SPRAR, when it was active.)  In 2018, the Italian “hard line” anti-immigration Interior Minister Matteo Salvini changed SPRAR and it transitioned into a new program (known as SIPROIMI) with tighter eligibility rules, with the result that fewer immigrants qualified for the services (a lot of them were supposed to be either sent back to CAS or CARA, or else deported if they don’t qualify for asylum).  The AFF’s (unfounded) fear is that without good second-line reception, the immigrant is just thrown into society and becomes homeless and destitute, without any kind of transition plan to good integration.  AFF plan wants the EU to give funding to Italy and tell Italy to restore the SPRAR program.  AFF may not know that the Italian government has changed since Salvini was in power, and in Oct. 2020 the policy was mostly reversed.