Italys Immigration Issue

The problem is that fears about crime by immigrants, inflamed by the news media and populist politicians, have combined with one of the largest waves of foreigners in Europe. The Northern League, a political party that once advocated the secession of Italy’s north, joined Mr. Berlusconi’s ruling coalition this spring after distributing posters around cities like Siena showing an American Indian next to a warning that Italians will end up, as the Indians did, penned into reservations if they don’t stop immigrants from taking over the country.

Here in Rome the first conservative mayor in years, Gianni Alemanno, won on a similar platform that advocated being tough on crime and illegal immigration. Rome, an ancient magnet for foreigners, is naturally more integrated than most Italian cities and, unlike most of the country, it has taken at least a few steps in recent years to come to terms with its multicultural reality, among them instituting a public library program to reach immigrants and provide Romans with books and lectures about foreign cultures. The question now is whether such efforts will continue.
Italian culture certainly isn’t diverse now. It subsists on an all-white, all-native, monoethnic diet of Italian game shows, Italian television mini-series, Italian advertisements on cable stations for improbable vibrating contraptions that promise to jiggle fat away, and Italian pop music. Even Roman schoolchildren no longer stray far from a spaghetti-with-ragú diet now that an intercultural city program to serve one international-themed lunch a month has been abandoned by the new center-right government, heeding some Italian mothers, who doubted the nutritional value of falafel and curry.

People here remember the last time the Italian government promised to deal with illegal foreigners, in 2002. Expulsions, 45,000 that year, dropped to 23,000 by 2006, while 640,000 new immigrants were legalized as part of the largest one-time legalization in the history of Europe. You could say that Italy, in its paradox, is going through the sort of culture shock the United States experienced a century ago, when millions of Italians, among others, immigrated to America. Romanians now make up the fastest-growing immigrant population here. There were 75,000 at the end of 2001. Since then, hundreds of thousands have arrived.

Romanians also account for 5.7 percent of the prison population. More than a third of all prisoners in Italy are foreigners. Foreigners are charged with 68 percent of rapes, 32 percent of thefts. (NYTIMES, June 25, 2008). So with this problem festering what would you do? Prevent all immigrants from coming in? I constantly see senegalese on the street selling their wares to earn a living - just like they did back home. The main different i see here though is the extremely high cost of living. I really wonder how they live without their families/friends support here. On one had the popluation is decreasing in Europe and people are needy and willing to work from other parts of the world - yet with this crime rate threatening to worsen how do you react? Is the prison rate due to disparity and desparation. Should the Roman government start programs to assist the immigration population?I unfortunately dont have the answer at this point but I find the situation extremely sad and feel its something we all need to consider. My family were immigrants once and you never know when you will be uprooted. How would you want to be treated?