Sunday, Jun. 16, 2002

The Arrival

By JEFF ISRAELY/Otranto

The Adriatic Sea is a glassy calm as the first hint of dawn turns the horizon a deep, dark blue. Another day is breaking across Italy's heel, and nothing more than the faint lights of a fishing boat is visible from the coast. But after a short walk along this beach near Otranto, a policeman's flashlight reveals scattered shirts and jeans, several pairs of warmup pants, one kid-sized sneaker, shoes, underwear, a gym bag. Shed like the skin of a former self, the week-old, waterlogged belongings of perhaps six to eight people are all that remain of the latest wave of the human tide that crashes on Western Europe's far southeastern shores.

Over the past decade, a harrowing 96-km motorized raft trip across the Adriatic from Vlore, Albania has become one of the main routes for would-be immigrants seeking work and a better life inside the European Union. Many spend four or five months traveling over land and across other waterways before paying Albanian smugglers ?500 to ?1,500 to ferry them to Italy. They are usually forced to abandon ship well short of the shoreline, and then wade in to look for a safe place to change into dry clothes. The immigrants, most of them economic migrants but some seeking political asylum, arrive from all points east and south — China, India and Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey, the Balkans and North Africa. But if they receive legal resident status, or manage to evade the authorities, they almost all wind up farther north — not just in Rome and Milan, but in Frankfurt, Calais, Dover and London too. Authorities estimate that 20,000 immigrants land illegally each year on the Italian coast. In addition to the Puglia region, they also touch down in Sicily and Reggio Calabria. And police estimate that at least half of all illegal immigrants simply disappear into the landscape.

Some, however, seek legitimate entry. Leaving behind poverty and a family of six in eastern Turkey, Mustafa Çelik made a two-month journey by land across Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia and Macedonia before begging Albanian smugglers to let him on board a raft for just j300. "It was all I had," the 38-year-old says, pulling at his shirt to indicate that he arrived in Italy with just the clothes on his back. After a choppy ride across the Adriatic, the smugglers motioned for the 40 or so passengers to jump into the water. Çelik , soaking wet, was picked up by police and brought to a nearby church-run holding facility north of Otranto to await a month of processing by Italian immigration authorities. Even if his request for political asylum is denied, Çelik will simply be given a written expulsion order requiring him to report to Rome's Fiumicino Airport within 15 days. But with no ticket — and often no desire — to go home, most people in Çelik 's situation simply start the long journey north.

Çelik says he was grateful at first to have made it safely to Europe, which he believes offers his family's only chance of escaping poverty. "Where I come from there is nothing," he said. Paris, where his brother works in construction, is his probable destination. But, he adds as his eyes moisten, the last week has given him time to ponder what he left behind: "I think about my family always."

Until now, E.U. leaders have left places like southern Puglia largely on their own to both prevent and protect new arrivals. When the raft traffic first began in the early 1990s in response to political and economic upheaval in Albania, Otranto residents responded with their own blankets and hot meals for the shivering travelers. Four years ago the city converted one of its buildings into an arrival center that provides basic necessities through national funds. In 1999, a border police unit was established, equipped with the same fast and agile rafts that smugglers use. Still, with a lack of top equipment and adequate staffing, at least some officers are frustrated. "This is the border of Europe and we don't have a proper radar," one says. "At least when they arrive, we should know they're here."

The anxiety extends to the ordinary citizens of Otranto, though virtually none of the arrivals ever settles in the area and the national government has begun picking up the bill for their immediate care. "We hosted them, fed them, clothed them — and then they began to steal," says an elderly man buying fish in the port. "Once [the immigrants] come, they never leave." Italians never challenge a raft with immigrants aboard because of the risk to the passengers. Otranto border police chief Carmine Ingrosso says the open sea requires extra care: "Yes, there are laws that must be respected. But in those very first moments we are concerned solely with the safety of the immigrants." Occasionally, disaster strikes. In the predawn hours of June 8, for example, smugglers forced 43 Kurdish refugees into the water at knife point a kilometer from the coast just south of Otranto. Four drowned. Such incidents form a tragic backdrop to the wider debate in Italy over immigration. In 1990, the number of new legal immigrants into the country was 24,200; in 2000, it was 181,300, a mere fraction of the 2.2 million already in Italy. The Lower House of Parliament this month approved a bill to make deportation easier and require all immigrants to be fingerprinted. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been swaying between right-wing allies who want a strict limit on arrivals and industry executives who value them as a ready source of labor. Otranto Mayor Franco Bruni says that the European Union must establish a common immigration policy to coordinate controls and challenge the non-E.U. states that are the source of unchecked arrivals. "Maybe with Iraq it's difficult," Bruni says. "But if Turkey wants to join the E.U., it can't play a clever man's game on this issue." After working a 10-hour night shift, fisherman Mauro Trotto is back in the port of Otranto at dawn untangling the scorpion fish and mullet from his giant yellow net. The 50-year-old father of five didn't see any immigrants heading inland last night. But over the years he's seen more than his share of over-crowded rafts filled with desperate people. "Most see Europe like we saw America," he says, "a place where you can live well and live free." But with the tide of political opinion turning against immigration, those dreams of a better life may shatter on Europe's shores.