The Italian economy needs about 250,000-300,000 new immigrants a year to maintain its quality of production and services, Welfare Minister Paolo Ferrero said on Monday.
In an address to the Euro-Mediterranean parliamentary assembly, the minister explained that the number coincided in large part with the decline in Italy's birth rate.
Ferrero also recalled that the Italian government is hammering out changes to the country's current immigration laws which aim at meeting the demand for employment and ensuring that "immigration takes place not haphazardly but in a structural manner".
The government is also working on a law regarding religious freedom, he added, which will "recognize the plurality of creeds on the condition that these creeds recognize the fundamental values of our constitution".
Foreign workers, Ferrero concluded, "should have the same guaranteed rights as Italian workers".
