here - Cooperazione Italiana allo Sviluppo

The visa can be individual - granted to a single requesting person and put on anindividual passport - or collective, granted to a group of foreigners, all having thesame citizenship.To obtain a visa the requesting person should present a written request, on aspecific form, filled in and handwritten by him/her and containing a passportphotograph. Those requesting the visa should, according to regulations, request itfrom the diplomatic-consular representative, personally, so as to be questionedregarding the motives and circumstances of the stay. The foreigner should attach avalid travel document to this request (in the case of Nigeria, normally a passport)and should declare the reasons for the journey, the transportation means also for thereturn, the means of sustenance during the journey and the stay, the conditions forlodging.Evaluated the acceptability of the request for a visa according to thedocumentation produced by the person requesting, and by what has emergedduring the discussions - normally direct and personal - the representativeundertakes to make preventive checks of security, consulting the list of foreignersnot admissible in the Schengen area.Once having obtained the visa for entry into Italy, the foreigner in order to bepermitted to remain in Italy should present himself to the Police of the competentarea where he/she will undergo photographic, typewritten checks and thepermission to stay will be issued for the same reason and for the same time as thevisa. However, the victims of exploitation in Italy with a regular visa never make arequest for permission to stay, even if they legally entered in Italy; therefore, theybecome irregular and for the Italian State, disappear.It should be recalled that, given the free circulation within the Schengen area,once entered in Europe in one of the member countries the circulation between thestates is quite easy. For this it has become more important that the policies onimmigration and the strategies to contrast criminality involved in the traffic ofmigrants are supported by common orientation and procedures.“Paradoxically, Schengen has increased the facility of the traffic because now,as long as you have a valid document for one of the member countries, thatdocument becomes valid also for the other countries and therefore the fact in itselfthat the checks extra EU are carried out in the first country of entry, then theflights are within EU...therefore the problem is to have a typology of commoncontrols, otherwise the weak links in the chain are used” (Public Prosecutor -Bologna).Sometimes the visas granted by the authorities do not foresee Europe as adestination, but often the flights for extra-European destinations have stopovers inEuropean airports. In this case the victim ends her flight at the transit airport andovercomes the controls thanks to a European passport in her possession.This is the case of a Nigerian woman interviewed who departed from Lagoswith her passport and a visa for Hong Kong. Arriving in Germany, where theaircraft made a stopover, she showed the passport of a Nigerian from London, andin this way entered into Europe, not continuing her journey for the Asian city.