Not even a week had passed since the start of the Berlusconi government when it found itself at the center of an international scandal, writes journalist Anna ZAFESOVA of the newspaper La Stampa. Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Maria Fernandez de la Vega accused the Italian authorities of inciting xenophobia and racism. And when Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero cautiously suggested she apologize, she advised Berlusconi to see a psychiatrist.
The reason was the Italian government's preparation of a package of measures to combat illegal immigration, promised during the election campaign. After residents of a neighborhood in Naples, apparently prompted by the local mafia, decided to take matters into their own hands and set fire to a couple of Roma camps, campaign promises had to be urgently translated into action.
The indignation of progressive public opinion knew no bounds, and the Spanish socialists' lead was taken up by German socialist Martin Schulz (who once made a name for himself by provoking Berlusconi to such an extent that he offered him the role of concentration camp commander). He succeeded in putting the misbehavior of the Italian government on the European Parliament's agenda, even though the ill-fated package of migration bills had not yet been adopted, and only intentions could be condemned. The Catholic Church also intervened. And Italy's left-wing opposition, still reeling from its crushing election defeat, cried out about impending fascism. Interior Minister Maroni unsuccessfully tried to explain that it was only about deporting illegal migrants, that no one intended to expel them on ethnic grounds, and that the problem itself had clearly not arisen in just one week of right-wing rule.
It all looked as if Berlusconi intended to complete the destruction of the Roma begun by Hitler. True, left-wing leader Walter Veltroni shamefacedly remained silent, since just a few months earlier, when he was mayor of Rome, he had sent in bulldozers to raze a Roma camp to the ground after a Roma man had raped and killed a passerby.
The slap from the Spanish, yesterday's 'little brothers' who are rapidly overtaking Italy in economic growth rates, was so painful that behind accusations such as 'but you kill bulls in bullfights,' as always, the very essence of the issue was lost. Some, however, recalled that the government of the dear Zapatero, so touchingly protective of the rights of all minorities, regularly shoots at Africans trying to climb over the border fence of Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in Morocco. Moreover, they shoot to kill, and those who are not killed but only wounded are left without assistance. And Spain's Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho had just proposed extending the detention period for illegal immigrants and stated that there is only one road for them: 'Back home.' Even Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El Pais, was forced to admit that Ms. de la Vega's outburst was an attempt to divert criticism from her own government's draconian immigration policy, which moreover has been left in isolation after Berlusconi joined the 'right axis' of Merkel and Sarkozy.
But for any self-respecting European leftist, quarreling with Berlusconi is a sacred duty. Although the migration problem for Europe is as acute as it is unsolvable. In Italy, migrants make up 5% of the population; in France they are approaching 10%; in Sweden, the first city in Europe – Malmo – has emerged where the non-indigenous population exceeds the share of natives. It seems that people will turn away from the problem until it explodes. And after the explosion – such as the revolt in the Arab suburbs of Paris, which propelled Sarkozy to the presidency, or the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who made an anti-Islamic film – everything will return to its place. And everyone will again pretend that nothing is happening.
Italy's political reaction to the migration vaccine is quite typical for Europe. The 'progressive' left forces pity foreigners in every possible way; young communists rally at temporary detention centers where illegal immigrants are crammed pending deportation and where conditions are indeed appalling, but little worse than ordinary Italian prisons. Politicians are outraged by the horrors of modern slave trading every time a barge crammed with starving Africans, who have given up all their family assets for illegal passage to Europe, sinks off the coast of Sicily.
Images of these unfortunate half-dead people fleeing poverty, war, and ethnic cleansing evoke sympathy and a passionate desire to fight for the rights of the third world. This struggle, however, sometimes takes strange forms. The Turin city council, for example, in an experiment, tried to combat underage Arab drug pushers through economic incentives. The lads were caught, and they would start crying that they had come to such a life not by their own will, that their father in Morocco really wanted to be an honest peasant and buy a flock of sheep, but had no money, so he sent his son to sell drugs in Italy. The kind city council would enter into their situation and buy the pushher's father the desired sheep, after which the lads would return to the street with pockets full of dope – apparently to save up for the purchase of bulls.
Attempts to either restrict or bring migration into a legal framework are considered the domain of the right, the angry and illiterate plebs. Parties like the Northern League plaster walls with posters depicting Native Americans (caption: "They also had migrants come, and now they live on reservations") and organize vigilante groups in areas where Arab pushers, Nigerian prostitutes, and Albanian thieves have made life impossible. There is a separate story with Gypsies, who are called "Roma" (calling them Gypsies is forbidden for political correctness), which causes confusion with ordinary Romanians, naturally to the latter's detriment. It is not easy to deport "Roma"; they are EU citizens and can more or less freely set up camps and cut kilometers of copper wire from poles (a common business here, which in Europe has somehow become a specialization of Gypsies). But since intellectuals rarely live near a Gypsy camp (one prominent left-wing economist proposed solving the problem of Gypsy vagrancy by building state-funded special houses with temporary ownership, something like a Gypsy "timeshare" – live and then move to another), there is no dialogue between the defenders of "Roma" rights and the "common people."
In the middle are millions of emigrants who honestly and calmly whitewash walls, care for the elderly, clean streets and houses, work in factories, grill shawarma and boil spaghetti, with fully legal documents and almost one hundred percent law-abidingness. They pay taxes, buy apartments (in huge numbers, because Italians are reluctant to rent housing to migrants) and fill a number of jobs that surprisingly matches the number of Italian unemployed. That is, if locals agreed to "dirty" work, the migration issue would not exist at all.
Children of migrants go to schools and, according to statistics, it is they (especially little Asians and Eastern Europeans) who are the most diligent and disciplined. They are normal, and therefore neither the right nor the left pay attention to them, for whom an immigrant must be poor and pitiful. Politicians are like that lady in Jerome K. Jerome's story who made it a mandatory condition when buying a house in the countryside to have poor neighbors. So that after breakfast she could do charity.
Filipino cleaners, Chinese traders, Russian computer specialists, Romanian caregivers, and Latin American cooks do not evoke any sympathy: they mind their own business, ask nothing from anyone, earn money, and are completely uninterested in discussions about the shortcomings of the Western lifestyle. No one fights for their rights, and no one considers them tomorrow's citizens: they will earn money and go home. And the fact that Europe has a monstrous demographic crisis and that already today Italian pensioners would find it difficult to pay pensions without the taxes of foreigners – it will be easier to think about that tomorrow.
In Italy, any proactive policy continues to be absent: no quotas for professionals, no study grants, asylum is practically not granted, many prestigious professions are de facto closed to foreigners. Numerous NGOs love to collect signatures against the Burmese junta, but are not very interested in teaching migrant children Italian and other integration projects. As a result, Indian mathematicians, Russian programmers, Pakistani doctors, and Chinese entrepreneurs go to Canada, the United States, Australia, and partly to the United Kingdom: countries where a strange surname will not cause much surprise, and where the process of turning a foreigner into a citizen is underway. And Europe, especially Southern Europe, gets what is simpler.
Italy is generally famous for its simplicity of morals; here even the very fact of illegal entry is not a crime, and once you get in, you can hang around for years. The case of an Arab who calmly continued his pimping activities with 39 (!) extradition orders in his pocket is not unique. This is not our capital, where no one would call the police (and they wouldn't come anyway) at the sight of a Gypsy woman begging with a suspiciously calm child of unknown origin in her arms.
Meanwhile, "normal" immigrants live for years on precarious terms and wait for the police to issue them a wonderful new plastic, biometric, compact, and waterproof residence permit, which has long been signed and approved, but the officials still haven't gotten around to laminating it and giving it to the legal owners. Their own Zapatero does not protect them.
Anna ZAFESOVA.
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