This essay, based on the results of a big inquiry carried out in Lombardy, put under observation the unemployment of immigrants issue, allowing us to throw light upon a universe which has remained up to now at the margins of researchers’ attention; a universe that must not, however, makes us forget the steps forward in the adaptation process of the last few years, tough having much greater implications. By focusing on the most marginal component of immigration, that is the unemployed or underemployed one, we demonstrate that evoking an ethnic difference could turn useful to obscure the new inequalities that are being shaped by the transformations of production processes and regulatory systems that mark the transition to post-fordism of our economies and societies. A sort of parallel labour market may therefore be ahead that, by exasperating the functionalist dimension of immigration, makes it eventually more and more competitive for the most vulnerable brackets of native supply.