President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday appealed to Italian authorities to set up channels so that young people who leave Italy to work abroad can come back and the domestic community is not impoverished by this brain drain.
“Working abroad for our young people is an opportunity and must be a choice, and if after a training course in Italy you are forced to leave due to a lack of employment or prospects, and once you have acquired valuable knowledge and experience, you are no longer able to return, you are faced with a pathology that needs to be remedied”, he said.
“When we fail to bring professionalism back to our country, it is the entire community that is impoverished. Identifying paths to ensure their return to Italy is a fundamental challenge that the institutions, the politicians must take up”.
The latest report from the Fondazione Migranti on Italians around the world said Wednesday that their numbers had swollen by 91% over the last 18 years, since 2006.
The number of Italian women abroad almost doubled, up 99.3%, minors were up 78.3% and the over 65s up 109.8%.
There are currently some six million Italians living abroad, the foundation said.