“MY MIND IS ALWAYS THERE”

Most of the families and individuals who have come to Italy have left family members behind in their country of origin or in the refugee camps in Ethiopia. Many of them have left their parents, or even sons or daughters. For some of them, reaching Italy and finally beginning a new life in a safe country gave them the chance to call the family members left behind in the country of origin. This was especially the case for political opponents of the Eritrean regime, who had cut off communication with their families after fleeing the country. Once safe in Italy, they were able to make the phone calls they had been missing for many years.
But for those whose families were separated when only a part of the family was selected for the Humanitarian Corridors program, reaching Italy was more emotionally complicated. One the one hand, it was the start of a new life in a safe country, but, on the other, it meant separation from family members and relatives, with no certainty of ever seeing them or living with them again.
The longer an extended family had lived together in the refugee camps, the harder this separation was for the ones who came to Italy, and it is important to stress that Caritas Italiana worked hard for months to try to bring whole family units to Italy. In some cases, Caritas was able to ensure that families made up of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren were brought to Italy, even if these families proved more difficult to integrate, since there were many family members, some advanced in years. In other cases, Caritas was able to successfully petition for family members left behind to be brought to Italy under immigration laws for the reunification of families. For example, it successfully brought the wives and minor children of two beneficiaries to Italy in March 2020. The complicated petition process and the repeated travel bans precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic severely limited the number of family reunifications and, in some cases, this also heightened the frustration of the family members in Italy.