Salvini, who is also Italy’s transport minister and leader of the anti-immigration League party, discussed the proposed measure in an interview on the Mattino 5 talk show on Friday.
“We’re working on a points-based residency permit, like a driving licence,” he told the show’s presenters.
“You’re well-behaved? You gain points. You commit crimes, deal drugs, create problems? You lose points and, once they’re gone, you go back where you came from,” he said.
In a social media post accompanying a clip of the interview, he said he was making the proposal on behalf of both the League and the government, indicating that it had the backing of other key figures in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right coalition government.
Asked by the programme’s host how the system would work in practice, he said holders would have their permit revoked after “the first crime,” without providing further details.
The proposal was immediately attacked by members of Italy’s opposition, who pointed out that foreigners who break the law can already be deported under the current legal system.
“Under our existing laws, a residency permit can already be revoked for certain serious crimes,” Matteo Mauri, a member of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and former deputy interior minister, told news site Fanpage.
READ ALSO: Which crimes could get your Italian residency permit revoked?
“Salvini is not suggesting anything that can’t already be done under certain conditions, which shows how cynical and pointless this proposal is.
“It’s the usual propaganda, typical of Salvini, that we’re used to by now: exploit the issue of immigration by linking it to that of security.”
“I have a reform: a points-based licence for politicians,” said PD MP Marco Furfaro.
“Between lies, empty promises, and missing public funds, they’d take it away from Salvini before it was even handed over," he added.
Writing for legal blog La Legge per Tutti (‘The law for everyone’), former magistrate Paolo Remer wrote that the proposal is likely to be unworkable, even if it were to receive parliamentary approval.
READ ALSO: What happens to your Italian residency permit if you lose your job?
The measure would entail a “comprehensive reform” of Italy’s immigration laws, he said, adding that it would risk violating articles 2 and 3 of the country’s constitution, which guarantee human dignity and the equal treatment of all people before the law.
Salvini served as interior minister under Giuseppe Conte’s coalition government from 2018 to 2019. In that role, he passed a hardline ‘Security Decree’ that abolished Italy's humanitarian protection status for migrants and made it easier to strip people of Italian citizenship.
But since taking office as transport minister in October 2022, he has struggled to exercise any significant influence on immigration issues, as his League party continues to lose votes to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
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