ROME: When the mayor of Cittadella, in northern Italy, issued new rules to keep the poor, homeless and unemployed out of his medieval town, the government branded the measure racist and discriminatory against destitute immigrants.

Two weeks later, Cittadella’s so-called “anti-drifter” ordinance has been adopted by another 40 town halls in the rich Veneto region, where anti-foreign sentiment is spreading fast in response to growing immigration, mainly from eastern Europe.

The new rules state that foreigners can apply for residency only if they have a regular job, earn an income of at least 5,000 euros a year per family member, live in an “adequate” home and are not deemed to be “socially dangerous.”

Cittadella’s mayor, Massimo Bitonci of the populist, anti-immigrant Northern League, says he is merely applying a European Union directive ratified by Italy’s centre-left government.

The directive says that EU citizens must have sufficient financial means to apply for residency in other EU countries.

But Social Affairs Minister Paolo Ferrero said Bitonci’s new regulations violate civil and constitutional rights, calling them “a decidedly racist and discriminatory measure.”

Implementing the EU directive, he said, is up to the interior ministry, not individual mayors.

Less than a week after the publication of his ordinance in mid-November, Bitonci was put under investigation and he could now face trial for abuse of power.

Yet other mayors in the region have followed his example, fuelling what critics say is a xenophobic backlash triggered partly by a series of crimes blamed on Romanians and gypsies.

Some 500,000 Romanians are estimated to live in Italy, a number that jumped following their country’s entry into the EU this year. Many live in squalid shacks.

“There’s nothing racist in what we are doing,” said Luca Claudio, the right-wing mayor of Montegrotto Terme, a small town near Padua where the “anti-drifter” rules were also adopted.

“It’s not against immigrants, it’s against those who do not play by the book — whatever their colour, religion or nationality,” he said.

In Romano d’Ezzelino, another town in Veneto, non-EU migrants have been banned from scholarships. In the nearby Lombardy region, the mayor of Caravaggio will from now on refuse to marry immigrants without a residency permit.

Critics say Italians seem to have forgotten that until not long ago they were the ones looking for a better future abroad.

“How many of our own migrants would not have been able to prove they earned the equivalent of what is being asked now from a foreigner in Cittadella? Possibly millions,” wrote daily Corriere della Sera in a recent editorial.—Reuters