They call them "unaccompanied foreign minors" and they estimate that there at least 8,000 of them in Italy. They are children who arrive illegally from outside the European Union without parents or anyone who is legally responsible for them. Terre di Mezzo, a monthly paper produced and distributed by the homeless and unemployed, reports that almost 24 per cent of these young people are under 14, and 16 per cent of them are girls. When these children are picked up by the authorities they are taken into communities run by the church or by local authorities where they are cared for and sent to school while their presence is reported to the committee for young foreigners. This committee decides whether the child may stay in the country or has to be repatriated. The condition of the family of the child in its country of origin has to be desperate for the child to be allowed to stay. Often the children run away from the community that is trying to protect them rather than be repatriated. Many of those who are sent home come back again illegally to Italy, particularly those who come from Romania who are allowed into Italy without an entry visa.