A/HRC/4/19/Add.4 page 25 • Migrants continue to suffer from a security approach in immigration legislation that criminalizes them. The security approach of the Bossi-Fini Law exposes migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees to: harassment by law enforcement agents; administrative detention in centres during the deliberation of their status, which often exceeds the deadlines prescribed by the law; and the criminal punishment of one to five years’ imprisonment for failing to obey an expulsion order or injunction to leave the country. In addition, in the view of the Special Rapporteur, the discourse of the authorities supporting a model of legal migration within quotas established on the basis of the needs of the labour market is challenged by the reality of an important number of migrants working in the illegal sector. Fundamental questions need to be raised in this context. Are the quotas wrongly established, or are the needs of the labour market incorrectly assessed? Are the lengthy and costly procedures an excessive burden for employers, who resort to hiring migrants illegally? Are the repressive norms in place pushing migrants into illegality? Is the current administrative detention envisaged for migrants and asylum-seekers in compliance with the human rights obligations of Italy? These and other questions will need to be answered by the Government in the revision of the immigration policy in place; • Members of the Muslim faith, despite belonging to the second largest denomination, are the only religious groups with whom the State has not signed a bilateral agreement (intese). 63. Secondly, the Special Rapporteur noted a dramatic socio-economic marginalization of these groups, who face greater difficulties in the enjoyment of their rights to employment, adequate housing, education and health. These inequalities vis-à-vis the rest of Italian society need to be urgently addressed. The Special Rapporteur found particularly disturbing the poor housing and living conditions of Sinti and Roma; the slavery-like conditions of migrants in the agricultural sector; the exposure of migrant women to abusive working conditions as domestic workers and caregivers and their high representation in the prostitution and sexual exploitation sector. 64. Finally, racism, discrimination and xenophobia have a deep cultural dimension. There is a profound lack of knowledge and understanding about the culture and religion of national minorities and migrants, in particular about Islam and Roma and Sinti culture and value systems, which remain untaught or insufficiently incorporated in school curricula despite the long-standing presence of these groups in Italian territory. Additionally, asylum-seekers and refugees, particularly from Africa, are wrongly believed not to have relevant contributions to make from a cultural point of view despite the richness of their history, art, system of values, spirituality, language and culture. Fundamentally, the assimilation approach to integration and its dominant rhetoric of “acceptance of or adaptation to our values”, which demands that migrants and asylum-seekers literally divest themselves of their cultural, religious and, if possible, ethnic specificity, is not only a rejection of cultural diversity but also the reproduction and recycling of the historical cultural prejudice against the uncivilized non-European. This posture, which reflects an ideological trend in the European construction that negates history as well as geography, promotes the European nature over the Mediterranean dimension of the national identity of the Italian society.