{"id":306196,"date":"2018-05-30T23:10:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T21:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/a-welcome-at-the-border\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:37:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:37:18","slug":"a-welcome-at-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/a-welcome-at-the-border\/","title":{"rendered":"A welcome at the border"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Ventimiglia is a \u201cgate,\u201d not a \u201cborder\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 at least as long as France does not suspend the agreements in place that allow people to come and go. So it has become a funnel for migrants who consider Italy a stepping stone to reach destinations beyond the border.<\/strong> \u201cIn the past year, more than 20,000 people have come through Ventimiglia,\u201d<\/strong> says Paola, a member of the local Focolare community. \u201cIt\u2019s like adding another Ventimiglia, since our population is around 24,000 inhabitants.\u201d A teacher at the diocesan seminary, she recalls how \u201cbetween February and March 2015, the seminarians started to distribute food to the homeless at the station. As days went by, however, the homeless started to multiply.\u201d They were seeing migrants who, after landing on the Italian coast, aimed to cross the border with France and reach other European countries. \u201cThat\u2019s when the \u2018emergency\u2019 began, and it has not let up since. At the beginning we joined other locals to volunteer and distribute sandwiches on the street.\u201d Collaborating with Caritas, \u201cwe contacted the Focolare community on the other side of the border, and they took turns with us, supporting us with money collected from fundraising during Monaco\u2019s Grand Prix. \u201cIn June 2015,\u201d she continues, \u201ca Red Cross camp sprung up near the station.<\/strong> Access was limited, but a number of us could enter under HACCP and collaborate in a number of ways.\u201d Alongside this \u201cofficial\u201d camp was another more \u201cinformal\u201d one, right on the border with France. \u201cMany immigrants had no documents, and seeing that the camp organized by the Red Cross required identification, many preferred staying there and trying to cross the border as fast as they could.\u201d Then, at the beginning of October, the camp was dismantled and cleared out in a \u201cpretty rough way.\u201d \u201cWhen the Red Cross camp was closed in May 2016, we suddenly found ourselves with more than a thousand people in town. It was an unsustainable situation, worsened by a local law that prohibits distributing food and essential goods to immigrants, which carries penalties and tickets. \u201cThen Caritas intervened to mediate. That\u2019s how we started welcoming people at the Church of Sant\u2019Antonio. By day it was a church; by night, a dormitory. Families with children and the most vulnerable were hosted in the church \u2013 the pews were moved and we brought covers, and then in the morning we would clean it all up.\u201d \"\"<\/strong>In July 2016 a new Red Cross camp was opened outside the city for men<\/strong>. Women and children continued to be hosted in church. \u201cIn 2017 a seemingly infinite influx of minors began, and most of them stayed along the Roya River. The local prefect asked the Red Cross to open up a section of the camp for them. \u201cIn the meantime, there were continual sweeps, with hundreds of immigrants boarded on to buses for Taranto in Southern Italy. Yet just days later they were back again. \u201cThe fact is,\u201d she explains, \u201cthat these people want to reconnect with relatives in other countries, and this is why they are ready to do anything. It\u2019s from here that they can try to cross the border. There are some who have tried ten times before succeeding.\u201d The border is guarded day and night. \u201cUnfortunately, all we are doing is fostering dependency. But they don\u2019t need clothes or a pair of shoes. They need to exercise their freedom of self-determination, which every person should have.\u201d<\/strong> Perhaps the solution could be to create a transit camp, Paola suggests, \u201ca place where an immigrant, during the journey, can stop, find nourishment, wash, change clothes \u2013 where they can receive medical attention and legal assistance they need.\u201d Paola calls their service \u201cnothing at all,\u201d but it is these details that help these travelers feel like people again.<\/strong> \u201cWe cook African or Arab recipes based on couscous and rice, which we learned how to mix with spices and create dishes according to their traditions. \u201cOne day we noticed that a Syrian woman bathed herself each time she came to Caritas, yet she kept putting on the same outfit. She was wearing a tunic with pants. She kept reaching into the piles of clothes, but each time she went away empty handed. \u201cThen we understood and asked some friends from Morocco if they had some clothes in her style. Finally, she was able to change and went away happy.\u201d Source:<\/strong> United World Project<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Known as the western gates of Italy, the city of Ventimiglia, at the border between Italy and France, has seen tens of thousands of migrants come through from the Mediterranean and into Europe. Here\u2019s the story from Paola of the local Focolare community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}