Italian antipathy towards immigrants has almost doubled in the last year, outgoing Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said Tuesday.
Presenting a new government report on immigrant relations, the minister said that the number of Italians who are unhappy about foreigners living in the country has risen from 5.9% to 11.3%.
Around 49% of Italians regard immigrants as dishonest.
According to the report, immigrants from Muslim countries are regarded as the most problematic group, with Italians citing their intolerance of Catholicism and criticism of national customs and traditions as stumbling blocks to smooth integration.
Fear of terrorist attacks also featured on the list of concerns.
One in three Italians objects to mosques being built on Italian soil, the report said.
However, the number of Italians who are happy to see immigrants in Italy has remained stable over the last year at 42%, according to the report.
Amato stressed that the majority of Italians still see immigrants as an economic resource for national industry as well as providing valuable services in caring for the elderly.
The report, which interviewed an equal number of immigrants living in the country, revealed that around 70% of foreigners were happy with their jobs and around 77% were positive about their lives in Italy.
But around 26% (up from 22.4% last year) said they planned to return home as soon as they can.
Some 58% were interested in acquiring Italian citizenship.
Officially, Italy currently has one of the lowest immigration levels in the European Union, with foreigners making up 5% of the population.
This places Italy on a par with Britain and Norway and a long way behind Switzerland (20%), Austria (9%) and Germany (9%).
However, immigrants who enter the country by illegal means each year mean that the statistics for Italy may be misleading.
Italy has so far issued around 278,000 permits to stay in Italy to Romanians, who make up the largest immigrant group in the country after Albanians.
But on Tuesday Amato said the Romanian interior ministry believes there are around one million of its nationals in Italy.
The sway of bad feeling towards immigrants in the country will come as no surprise to the centre-right, for whom immigration and security issues played a key role in the recent election campaign.
The former centre-left government came under criticism for failing to tackle immigrant crime after a series of incidents horrified the nation.
In the most shocking case, a woman was beaten, raped, robbed and then left to die by a 24-year-old Romanian gypsy outside a Rome railway station.
The incident led to the expulsion of dozens of Romanians considered a threat to public order but did not stop a similar attack from taking place earlier this month.
A report issued last week on prison overcrowding found that foreigners account for 38% of Italy's jail population.
On Monday Franco Frattini, the outgoing European Commissioner for Justice and Security who is expected to be assigned the foreign ministry portfolio by Premier-elect Silvio Berlusconi, called for tough new legislation to deal with foreign nationals suspected of crimes.
He also said only foreigners earning above a certain wage should be allowed to stay in Italy, or they should be ''sent back to the country they came from''.
