...immigration in Italy...

As I wrote in one of the last posts, I can perceive some differences between Italy and America as far as the attitude towards immigrants and immigration in general is concerned. That has something to do with the history of this phenomenon in the two countries. Italy, cannot rely on a rich history of immigration as America does: it has long been a point of departure for lots of emigrants trying to escape from poverty and hunger. Then, starting from the last decades of the XX century, the trend has completely changed direction: our country has progressively become a “dream” for lots of poor people, mostly from Eastern Europe and Northern Africa.

Immigration has of course positive and negative consequences: one the one hand, the newly arrived are so poor and desperate that they accept any kind of job and so they sort of take on the works that nobody here would like to do and contribute to keep our economy going on. BUT, on the other hand, their desperate conditions may also lead to dramatic consequences. There’s no reason to spend many words on this because the plague of criminality, drug traffic, violence and the formation of ghettos in more degraded parts of the city (via Anelli, for instance) is constantly under our own eyes. Not to mention the problem of illegal immigration, which costs us an awful lot of money every year.

Of course there are many things to say on this topic and I'm really looking forward to our discussion, so that we can learn more from one another.


P.S.: In the meanwhile, I’ve browsed the Net in order to find some useful pieces of information. There's a little bit of everything but I particularly liked this website:

http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~cmnewell/index.htm

It is really clear and well-organized. It contains a brief history of Italian immigration as well as a very useful insight on the phenomenon of illegal immigration and a description of the recent measures adopted in order to tackle it.