The campaign "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me," launched by a number of organizations committed to helping migrants and refugees arriving to Italy and advocating for their rights to be respected, is continuing its effort to gather signatures in support of a new legal proposal.

Two goals

There is a general and unjustified perception that migrants are dangerous and create an emergency situation by their very presence in Europe, and this perception fuels policies and laws that foster discrimination and segregation

The "I was a stranger" campaign pushes back against this perception by demanding a new approach to how we view and react to migrants, one that puts human dignity and human rights at the center and moves towards integration and inclusion.

Organizations promoting the initiative decided to join their expertise and experience to create a draft law with two main goals:

• to improve migrants' issues with legality, by introducing a temporary residence permit to facilitate employment research, reintroducing a system enabling employers to integrate migrants in the workforce and regularizing foreigners already integrated in Italy.
• to guarantee basic rights, by granting access to social security provisions, fostering health rights and providing access to political representation.

Signature drive

The campaign has been actively gathering signatures all over Italy, especially in conjunction with World Refugee Day. At the moment, there are over 100 information booths and signature collection tables at points across Italy, and their locations and new ones are monitored through a dedicated map on the initiative’s Facebook page.

The goal is to obtain 50,000 signatures in six months, the number required for the proposal to be considered by the Parliament.

The initiative is spreading so widely that it even got the attention of Pope Francis, who expressed his "sincere appreciation" for its mission and confirmed the support of Catholic organizations such as Caritas and Migrantes Foundation, which actively work to improve migrants’ reception.

The campaign will continue for several more months with its effort of fostering inclusion, hoping to succeed in raising an alternative to a reception system that shows huge flaws and is based on a policy of blame rather than acceptance.