Patrolling Freedom: Terrorism, Dictatorships, and Migrants

During the Libyan crisis, the former dictator of North Korea Kim Jong-il banned about 200 of his subjects from coming back to the country.

The interpretation given by the international community was of course that he was scared by the possibility of a diffusion of instructive details about the popular uprising that led to the overthrow and finally the death of his friend and “colleague” Gaddafi.

It is one of the most understandable and evident features of an authoritarian regime that it has to control strictly the entrances and the exits in order to defend its status: the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński measured in his book Imperium the huge extension of barbed wire necessary to keep the old communist superpower together, to the point of being one of the most productive branch of Russian industry. And the crisis in Berlin immediately after Second World War was caused by Stalinists’ vital necessity of controlling the movements of Western and Eastern citizens.

No enslaved country can remain the same for long if involved in a flow of continuous movement.

It should be far less logical that a free country needed to obsessively control his doors, if not in a situation of declared war. And it is probably this presupposition that backs the claims for putting the the immigrants under more pressures as a consequence of Boston bombing.

The problem is that this decision could have terrible and unintended backlashes.

Politics of systematic exclusion of some nationalities could confirm the perception, unfortunately already present in some cases, that the United States see entire populations as enemies despite the lacking of formal declarations of war. And since in some of those country it is effectively possible that they are raised from children  within an atmosphere of hostility, if not of hatred, an objective convergence by their target could lead them to act against it even more staunchly.

One of the basic idea of liberalism is that the citizens should be loyal to the state out of a self-interest, because they feel grateful for the benefits they enjoy from the system, and not because of fear, constriction and external, paternalistic direction. It is only through the free and unpredictable connections established by the persons that a government derives its thriving, if it ensures them, or its risk of being betrayed, if it distorts them like Kim Jong-il’s North Korea. But the government cannot protect society from itself: the defence of liberty implies a noticeable deal of optimistic trust in human potential.

Salman Rushdie, one who has unwillingly become an expert of Muslim extremism, and not only because he was born in Pakistan, has questioned in Step Across This Line the possible responses to the tragedy of 9/11, that he reads not only as an attack to America but to the very core of his beloved liberal modernity. And his answer is that it is only increasing the quantity and quality of reasonable freedom that our society will triumph over the barbarians. This, though, will also require us to rethink and sometimes narrow the extension of outrages, inequalities, discriminations and prejudices, even within our supposedly fair and open communities.

Economy and Security Eat Up Space of Democracy

 

It is long since the discussion on immigration has been considered a problem that mainly has to do with security, and not only in the US. 

In the current outline of the upcoming immigration overhaul this established method to address the problem is essentially confirmed , despite inadequate. Immigration is seen as subordinated to the necessity of having a secure border, and particular standards have been specified: but we have no clear ideas where they come from. Is the percentage of apprehensions and turn backs related to the present data of border crossing, or is this “effectiveness rate” only an abstract goal that has been established during some armchair disputations? The question is all the more urgent since this is for the moment the first principle of the “new” system, and one that can posit restraints on the application of the rest.

 

The second relevant aspect, that has been indicated as the most innovative tool to control immigration and adjust it to the needs of the country, is the eminence of economic calculations. The caps for H-1B visas and W visas will be directly connected to the high and low of unemployment rate and to the market demand. It was an old evidence that the flow of immigrants is related to the availability of jobs. But now this matter of fact is recognized, legitimized, strengthened, together with the repeated stressing of the DREAMER’s and STEM’s privileges.

 

The depoliticisation of politics is going on. As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues in his book After Virtue, and as many scholars of globalization as Comaroff and Comaroff confirm, true or pretended expertise is replacing ideals, ideology and moral in writing the political agenda. The representatives are more and more considered mere functionaries, and their attitude towards vital problems like immigration doesn’t change that much from a party to the other. It is a matter of technical direction. Beside protests and polls, immigration is almost never checked through official public scrutiny.

 

But with the benevolent, demagogic approval of the elites or not, the people will still have its part to play. The system that’s being employed will reactivate the contradiction between invitations to provisional workers and the desire for an almost complete border control. With many sudden accelerations, like the one that occurred under Reagan’s administration or the one that is occurring today, millions of migrants, after years of maltreatements and fear of deportations, will continue to be recognized as a part of the community, at least to some extent.

And in the long run, I hope, it will help not only to renew the openness of the US, but even to build the super-national integration between them, Mexico, and Canada that will in turn be part of the path toward a global, interconnected society.

Hate, the Deadliest Terrorist

 

This week, starting with tomorrow, will probably be a turning point for immigrants legislation. And yet the event I want to consider is not directly related to foreigners and undocumented, or at least it shouldn’t: not only for the delays it could bring about 

 

I want to spend some words on the terrible bombing that transformed Boston marathon in a bloody trap, and so I hope to add some reflections to the immediate and unavoidable sympathy to the three victims, their families, and to the more than a hundred people who have been hurt by the explosion.

 

What has all this massacre to do with immigration? Unfortunately, it is quick to show. It is enough to give a look to the news reported by CNN: a Saudi national kept under guard in hospital, investigators in search of “a darker-skinned or black male” with a possible foreign accent. 

Once again, America is facing the fear of being under attack in its own territory, something that didn’t happen even during the worst times of WWII or of the Cuban missiles crisis. The future evolution of the investigation, in the most lamentable of the hypotheses, could affect the immigration overhaul, especially the part related to border security, as 9/11 heavily influenced the subsequent legislation, for example the fourth title of the Patriot Act. 

 

We don’t know what to expect from the next proceedings. Of course Al-Qaeda is a scary possibility, and as it has been noticed the fact that such an attack occurred on Patriots Day represents some evidence of a possible anti-American terrorist plot.

 

But my biased European mind cannot but return to the mass-murder that hit Norway less than two years ago. The killer, Anders Breivik, was so mad to plan a face-two-face shooting contemporary to the detonations of the bombs he had displaced in the center of Oslo. This allowed him to harvest far more innocent lives than the responsible for Boston bombing did, but at the same time permitted an immediate identification of the offender: a full-blooded son of Norway, whose mind was riddled with islamophobic paranoia and social alienation. 

 

In an interview that can be watched also on YouTube (see video at 28:15), Edward Said, the great scholar and author of the best seller Orientalism, stressed the readiness with which Arabian are considered possible terrorists, while this quick generalization is not visible when we have to do with (so called) Christian fundamentalists. He himself was asked to give the investigators some advice after Oklahoma City bombing, and ironically that inquiry concluded with the arrest of an American citizen. 

 

There’s no point in discussing which scenario is at present the most realistic, that is if we should blame Al-Qaeda or some other organizations or even an individual like Breivik for this heinous bloodshed.

But both the Norwegian killer and Bin Laden (that in fact the former paradoxically admired) have in common the appeal to a “crusade” against a race of evil enemies: a murderous and suicidal ideal that led them to the destruction of their own lives after those of their own peoples. That’s why prejudices and generalized hatred should always be avoided, even when hunting for terrorists: they are the deepest responsible for any kind of violence. 

A Long Wait and the Hope for Something Different

These days could be the eye of the storm of immigration debate.

The Senators who are members of the “Gang of Eight” contradicted each other on the time it will takes before they come to a substantial agreement, with Schumer  pointing to the end of this week as a feasible deadline and some others like Marco Rubio that not so many days ago still considered “premature” the rumors about the possibility of seeing a deal quickly.

 

The GOP, and Rubio in particular, has repeatedly confirmed his will to reform the immigration system and after the clear sign that came from the last elections they don’t want immigrants to feel criminalized anymore, or at least this is the policy of the most preeminent spokesman. Despite the seriousness of the Republicans’ efforts, though, the stall that Rubio is painted to be imposing on all the “Gang of Eight” by the media risks to turn out as an own goal. Once again, as with the number of deportations or other features of the legislation on the theme, the electors won’t reward who has done better, but who has been perceived as doing better.

 

A various combine of association representing the civil society, in the meanwhile, is gathering in front of the capitol tomorrow to press the final completion of the overhaul .

 

This event could prove significant if the immigrants’ groups are able to organize demonstrations as imposing as those of 2006, when they faced the menace of HR 4437 attracting almost a million people to the rallies.

And yet my critic is that this claims from the public opinion are centered on the time of the reform rather than on the content.

There is no point in obtaining a swift decision if the gist of the plan remains the hysteric fear of a border that is not secure. This part of the immigration system, namely the deadly devices that have been displayed all along the Mexican border, in particular in Arizona, appears to me as the most displeasing obsession of the politicians working at the problem and it brings with it the threat of other “Secure Communities” programs. The strengthening of the border is something more than the creation of geographical and physical barrages: the border, unfortunately, sometimes passes through one family member and the other and this emphasis on its importance risks to be a disguised defense of deportations.

 

How could it be possible, I wonder, to control the border-crossings if at the same time they mean to implement the visas given to temporary workers? Isn’t there a contradiction between the desire of more stability and the actual chance given to potential over-stayers? I think it is the same contradiction that occurs between the needs of the economy on one hand and the ideological fear of a Hispanic invasion on the other.

 

In conclusion, both for the momentary lack of an explicit agreement between the Senators and above all for the threatening importance given to an ambiguous criterion such as the creation of a “secure border”, I take the “spring of immigration”, just as the actual spring, to be lamentably yet to come. 

Cesar Chavez’s Easter

 

 

Yesterday, the Sunday when about 2 billions of Christians around the world celebrated Easter, Google made the controversial choice of creating a “doodle” to honor the Latino workers’ rights activist Cesar Chavez.

Unsurprisingly, polemics broke out immediately, and were noticed even by Italian newspapers and websites, despite the fact that Chavez is almost unknown in Europe and, because of this, Google had maintained the ordinary page in mine and other non-American countries.

 

As it has been stressed by Stephen A. Nuño, the protests have not that much to do with religion.

Google, of course, has a pragmatic secular market strategy and tries to please all its multicultural clients with equal discretion.

 

I made some quick researches, and the most religious “doodles” I could find are those exhibited for Christmas and for Thanksgving Day, but they only display a turkey and some childish toys. Last time they celebrated Easter, they did it through adding some eggs to the Google logo: OK, they are Christian symbols of Resurrection from a torpid body, but who would say chocolate eggs are religious?

In general, I have the slight perception that Google is simply trying to tantalize the web-surfers’ (and generally human) sensitivity to celebrations without committing to a particular set of beliefs and so loosing appeal to all the others.

A difficult balance that is searched for by the vast majority of economic enterprises.

 

Why the silence on Easter this year has been so unpalatable to many bloggers? Well, probably the fact is that Chavez is (improperly) nicknamed a “socialist”, as a matter of fact was a union founder and leader, and of course represents a Hispanic cultural heritage that some folks would gladly avoid mingling with their concept of “American”. Furthermore, Chavez seems to be the inventor of the watchword “Yes, we can”, or more correctly “Sì, se puede”, that as everybody knows was wielded by Democrats during Obama’s presidential campaign. Two years ago the White House also proclaimed a Cesar Chavez Day that is even observed as a national holiday in Texas, California and Colorado, and this latter information strengthens the understanding, if it was needed, that the problem is outright political, maybe cultural, and truly not religious in a strict sense.

 

Trying to overcome my personal ignorance about their story, I discovered that one of the clearest features of Chavez’s struggles was a religious commitment. He hired the icon of the VIRGEN DE LA GUADALUPE as a symbol of Latinos’ enfranchisement and during his fasts, surrounded by pictures of saints and political activists who inspired him (mostly religious, like Gandhi or MLK), he accepted as only food the Holy Communion.

A Catholic website that you can deem everything but “progressive” molded a (literally) passionate portrait of the union leader more than a year ago, and recalled his “orthodoxy” together with his ability to speak to the man of the street.

The most striking detail thinking about the Google-doodle issue is that Chavez organized a memorable pilgrimage to Sacramento so that it culminated on the festivity day of Easter.

 

All the theoretical background of Chavez, a pragmatic and active player but not a man of thoughtless temper, as his systematic non-violent strategy shows, drew from the social teachings of Leo XIII and Pius XI. These popes insisted in condemning modern nationalism and racism before and while they became so dramatically powerful to lead Europe in the disasters of WW I-II, and they advocated for a “social economy” that recognizes private property as a “natural (divine) right”, but at the same time subordinated it to the right to a decent life and to the common property of creation by all humanity.

That is to say: it is not a sin to be rich, but only if there is none of your brothers starving because of your disproportionate wealth (see for example how Caritas in Veritate 27 recalls Luke 16, 19-31). In this latter case, greed can be a cause of earthly (and even eternal) condemnation.

Chavez was able to embody these principles and at the same time to reach out to all the communities of “people of good will”, independently from their particular beliefs.

 

In conclusion, he is in my eye a model of how a man can remain loyal to his deepest identity and become a valuable member of a larger society, from the United States on to the whole world, in a similar way to Martin Luther King, that Chavez openly admired. They deserve a place between the sons America can be proud of and that contributed to shape its contemporary identity, no matter what the advocates of “whiteness” would say.

 

So kudos to Cesar Chavez, and happy Easter!    

Intertwined Prejudices: Drugs Smuggling, Gun Control, and Immigrants

 

The Mexican border has been associated with drugs smuggling for a long, long time. As Nevins explains in his book Operation Gatekeeper, Tijuana has been dubbed “the sin city” because of its mass tourism centered on gambling, alcohol, prostitution and, especially in recent decades, drugs.

 

Furthermore, Mexico represents the connection between US and Latin American drug markets, that e,braces the northern regions of Central America as long as the underground hubs in Colombia.

Even recently the country has met horrific peaks of violence and there the name “war on drugs” seems to be taken literally for “Narcos” don’t hesitate to use grenade and other weapons as such to attack Mexican law enforcers

 

Are the doors of entrance in the United States the same for drugs flow and immigrants? Probably not at all. The smugglers have to be certain that their very costly and sensitive merchandise arrives safe and stashed in the country, while immigrants’ routes are extremely dangerous, as proven by the corpses that continue to emerge from the desert

 

The Mexican war against and between the “Narcos”, moreover, has had a pace independent from that of immigration: this last was stepped up in the Nineties, while the first is a much older phenomenon and it decreased for some time just before the beginning of this century, due to a sort of truce.

It has to be added that the drug consumption in the US is the obvious fuel of the smuggling and that, surprisingly, in the border regions too the vast majority of individuals involved in trafficking are American citizens

 

According to the well-established image of the dangerous boarders-crossing Latino criminal, the debate on gun control involved concerns regarding minorities’ communities. Once again, statistics show that Black and Hispanic possess far less guns than White. Nonetheless, they bring the social stigma of violence and are the most likely victims of the American side of “war on drugs”. In the United States, though, its battles are not usually those of policemen reacting to grenade throwing, but rather consist in frisking young suspected and running the risks of stigmatizing their neighborhoods through oppressive and insistent patrolling.

 

Hence the danger that gun control entails an increase of inequalities in the treatment of minority members, as it historically happened with the first restrictions to the Second Amendment.

Resounding Releases and Silent Imprisonments

 

 

 Last week news that someone found shocking originated from a source that usually is thought as having not much to do with immigration. The discussion on “sequestration”, an economic issue that consists in imposing cuts to the federal expenses, implied the mass release of hundreds of immigrants.

 

The public eye, together with some Republican politicians, considered this choice a serious menace to citizens’ security and an unjust procedure that closely resembles an amnesty. Now, we know from the debate started months ago that “amnesty” is considered a sort of derogatory label, useful to pull down the adversary’s proposals as “too gentle”.

 

When we read these alarms-like reports, though, we can easily notice how superficially the information is provided. Immigrants released: so why were they in? One story reported by the New York Times is characterized by domestic violence connected to a quarrel with the convict’s wife. But some other voices can raise more awareness of the reasons of these imprisonments: for example, the witness of Miguel Rodriguez, a nineteen years old who simply failed to use his turn-signal. He was also an “illegal”, of course.

 

By the way, how many people who read with preoccupation these stories of “criminals” let free to wander around know that these social identities and disquieting nicknames are related more to changes in the country laws than to these people’s actual misdeeds?

 

The sharp divide between felony and infringement of civil rules has switched in the last decade. Unfortunately, as I noticed hastily in my previous post, it is not only an American problem. Beginning in 1998, also in Italy we are detaining people whose only or most relevant fault is that of being undocumented. Other countries of Southern Europe are reacting in the same way to what they perceives as a threat to national sovereignty.  

 

Except from the injustice that is to be seen in such a treatment, what affects me most is the short circuit, the blind confusion that these practices engender in the public debate. Statistics easily report that immigrants are, in an overwhelmingly majority, also criminal and that they are detained in numbers incomparable to native citizens. What statistics usually do not report is the sad story of how these persons were transformed in criminal, creating laws capable of circumscribing exactly their social group with the stigma of illegality. That’s how it became possible to detain a teenager because of a (reported) mistake while driving, and to authorize other detentions like this as a consequence of the ascertained danger these guys would constitute to our society. It is a vicious circle alimenting itself.

 

What these policies don’t aliment, though, are the state’s finances. To detain as many people as possible can sound reassuring, but it clearly has a huge cost. Human rights activists define laws like Operation Streamline “a lucrative deal for the private prison industry”

 

Perhaps which people are getting benefits from these politics could be called into question. Anyway, what remains unquestionable is also what should concern us the most. We surely know who is paying: us, as citizens, and not only in terms of money but even in terms of injustice.

Italian Elections and the (Un)Importance of Migration

This was a special week-end for my country and so I want to dedicate this post to the perspective of immigrants’ rights confronted to the results of the Italian election.

In order to better explain how the situation is, I try to put forward some unpretending hints to the dimension of the phenomenon of immigration and to the agenda of the different parties regarding it.

A country of emigration discovers immigrations

Italy is traditionally considered as a country of emigrants. As a consequence of the wars and riots that characterized the creation of the unite nation-state in the second half of the 19^th century, a flow originated from different regions, especially the southern. Since 1861, the year when the new Kingdom of Italy was created under the Savoy dynasty, till 1985, it has been estimated that about 30 millions Italians have left the motherland. In Europe, as long as in North and South America, the presence of people of Italian descent is still imposing, albeit they are frequently disguised thanks to mixed marriages and integration.

Beginning with the Balkan crises in the middle ’90s, though, and as a consequence of the end of the colonial empires in Africa and the violent conflicts that hammered the poorest of the continents, the situation was suddenly overthrown and Italy became a country of immigration.

With the Arabian Spring and the end of Gadhafi’s regime thousands of refugees reversed on tiny islands of the south and the problem underwent and escalation from endemic to explosive.

At the same time, in the end of the ’90s some special measures were issued by the Government. “Centers of temporary permanence” were established and for the first time it was possible to detain an individual not because of some criminal offense but just out of his being undocumented. The traditional “ius sanguinis” model, that, in a different manner than in the US, grants citizenship at birth only to people born from at least one Italian parent, remained unquestioned.

The coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, who remained the chief of the Government from 2001 to 2011 with a two years interruption in 2006-8 enforced controls on immigrants and transformed the centers of “temporary permanence” in structures explicitly devoted to deportation, namely the “centers of identification and expulsion”. The Northern League, one regionalist party that had great influence on these issues, obtained the writing of the “Bossi-Fini” law. Legal permissions of staying were limited and matched with stable jobs, while there was a crackdown on “illegals” seen as more eager to crime and as sources of drug and prostitution smuggling. They were dubbed  with the Italian word “clandestini”, that was traditionally used to indicate who enter a ship or an airplane without been noticed and that changed meaning in these years.

The Northern League, together with some far-right parties, was one of the few interpreters of the feelings of fears and nationalism that were spreading throughout the population as a consequence of the sudden, dramatic growth of the immigration rate. At the same time, the native population fertility rate was decreasing at a pace similar and sometimes even faster than others western countries. This also contributed to increase the perception of an invasion especially directed against the richest region of the North, the “white and christian Padania” as Mario Borghezio, member of the European Parliament and most extremist deputy of the Northern League, called it during a speech.

Appealing to the classic arguments of anti-immigration parties, not least the competition on the job-market exacerbated by the economic crisis in the Euro Zone, Northern League reached a 10% of national electoral consents despite being locally-rooted and oriented toward secession or clear-cut federalism. It deployed its glowing methods of propaganda, such as the poster I reported above, as a way to pursue this end.

The message can be translated “They [Native American] suffered immigration, and now live in reservations. Think about it!”

Some complex reasons, though, made the Berlusconi’s coalition dissolve even if it had been given by voters one of the vastest majority of deputies in the history of the republic. The President of the Republic (not to be confused with the Prime Minister) decided to rely on the towering economist Mario Monti to deal with the economic crisis and to lead the country through an about one-year transition that ended (hopefully) with this week-end elections.

So what is it likely to be the future of the more than five millions of Italian immigrants (8% of the population) and the estimated 500000 “illegal”

It is not easy to answer this question as long as parties themselves fail to face the problem of immigrants rights and focus more on themes that grasp the attention of Italian electors, for example taxation, cost of government, retirement policies and so on.

The Democratic Party, a left-wing political force that was assigned by polls a clear majority of votes until they were shut down according to a law that imposes media political silence during the days of elections, is one of the few that explicitly pays attention to the theme of immigration. Their program is basically to shorten the period needed to immigrants’ children to obtain Italian citizenship. It has to be said that Italian model of welfare states, according to European Standards, gives to immigrants children exactly the same rights (education, healthcare…) of Italian, except the rights (mainly political) connected to full citizenship.

The electoral manifesto also shows the intention, traditionally vindicated by all progressive parties, to repeal the whole “Bossi-Fini” bill or at least its substantial articles and so to change the overall immigration policies. This ideas radically questions the recent year approach to immigration, but is has also to be recognized that were politicians from the Democratic Party area who created the Turco-Napolitano law in 1998, namely the law that introduced “centers of temporary residence”. In their latest program there’s also a chapter explicitly speaking of “preventing irregular immigration and fighting illegal immigration”.

The People of Freedom, Berlusconi’s party, is expected to be the second party with some 5-7% of votes less than the Democratic. It is a very peculiar political movement and it doesn’t have a clear program visible on the website. The objectives it explicitly pursues are probably the ones mentioned by its leader in public speeches: tax-reduction and other actions to help economy and industry to recover. As far as I know, immigration has not been a hot-topic of its debate preceding elections and I think the most plausible hypothesis would be that of a continuity with the past. As an ally of Northern League, Berlusconi is not expected neither to challenge the immigration system that he himself contributed to create, nor to endorse its allies most extremist requests, both because of some tensions occurred between the two parties and the loss of consensus that, according to polls, now see the Northern League only at a 5% of national scrutiny.

The ex-premier Mario Monti is now become the leader of the centrist coalition With Mario Monti for Italy: a Civic Choice. During his period as a chief of the government, Monti couldn’t change the rules of the system because of the nature of his mandate that, I remind you, was not given him by elections but by an emergency decision of the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano as a response to the economic and political crisis. He was supposed to be working on economy and urgent issues and he shirked from controversial fields. At the same time, though, he created a cabinet for “Integration and International Cooperation” and delegated it to Andrea Riccardi, the coordinator of the Community of Saint Egidio. This is a Catholic movement committed to the development of international peace (they contributed, for example, to the peace treaty that ended the war in Mozambico and that was signed in Rome) and the struggle against fascist and racist ideologies. In fact, the article the Monti devoted to immigration on the website created for these elections has the title “Agenda Immigration – A Source for the Growth of Italy”. Monti explicitly states that the immigration (and also the refugees’) system has proved to be broken during the last crises and the landing of masses fleeing from Northern Africa’s unrest. He invites to shorten the period necessary to obtain Italian citizenship for children underage to only 5 years of permanent residence. His program of a general overhaul is similar to that of the Democratic Party, but with no mention of illegal immigration restrictions. This party is expected to gain around 15% of votes.

A similar share could be reached by the Five Stars Movement, a party founded by the comedian and television entertainer Beppe Grillo. This political force is of a totally new kind and appeals to “direct democracy” through media employment, especially relying on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Its official website, indeed, is the personal blog of its leader.

I skimmed the program quickly and I couldn’t find any reference to the theme of immigration, that obviously surprised me but was also one of the most uneasy objection that the comedian had to face from its adversaries in last months.

The party is mainly committed to issues like the defense of the environment, animalism, green energy and, as I said, the improvement of citizens’ participation to the government.

I finally say something about the actual politics of the Northern League, of which I have already spoke, but the list of Italian parties could be longer. Anyway, these five, perhaps together with another one or two, are by far the most relevant.

At present Northern League has switched its attention from the nationalist to the local and nativist claim. “The North First” is the motto largely employed for these elections. Of course the official website spends some words related to immigration and I find itself significant that they are embodied in the section “Justice – Security – Immigration”. The term is surrounded by others that can be translated as “Jails”, “Underworld”, “Penal System” etc.

It seems clear that, while paying more attention to other ideas perceived as more useful in respect of the elections, the Northern League has maintained its “iron fist” toward (or against) immigration. Their official document on the issue explicitly recalls the “ius sanguinis” model in the title and begins with the words “Citizenship shouldn’t be thought as a means to ensure integration but, on the contrary…”.

I underline, once again, that Northern League won’t easily be influential of the immigration policies of the future since it is expected to stay at opposition together with Berlusconi and as other new-born parties such as Monti’s or Grillo endorse a far different if not opposite approach to the theme.

In the end, though, I realistically point out that the issue has not been given the importance it deserves due to the demographic and economic relevance of immigration and to the strategic position of Italy as a “gate to Europe” beside Greece and Spain. The past, with the troubles that followed the civil wars in Central Africa, and more recently the Arabian Spring and the Mali crisis, has clearly shown the dimension on which immigration is impacting our social and political institutions. The future, as a consequence of the immigrants’ fertility rates, 0.3 higher than the 1.8 (or lower) of Italians’, that is almost a world (negative) record, won’t but enforce the centrality of this theme.

At present, though, politicians turn their faces away. As long as they can afford it.

Postscript: Before I was able to publish this post, the first projections of the results appeared on the website of the most important Italian newspapers. It seems that Italian polls has proved unreliable. It is almost a tradition. I underline just three elements of the most updated scenario: Berlusconi received far more votes than expected and his coalition is about in balance with the one of the parties of the left, while Monti did far less than forecast and Grillo far better, being the first party (but since it is not allied with anybody, it won’t be a majority party). The political situation, and the Senate in particular, right now looks ungovernable and, between other problems, a significant reform of the immigration system appears really unlikely to happen easily, even if the Northern League, with only a 4%, fell at one of the lowest level of its electoral history.

Immigration debate after the State of the Union Address: has the future already passed?

In their article on immigration, Kristen McCabe and Doris Meissner explain that, despite being coherent with his backing immigration reform, Obama has always assured that he wants economy improvement, together with health care and natural climate defense first. This was one of the reason why during his former mandate there were not significant changes to the immigration system, rather an enforcement of it.

 

Now it seems that he stated clearly that the emergencies are others, and he added to the list some concerns regarding the education system and strongly emotive hints to gun control. In his State of the Union Address, immigration is mentioned only at the bottom of page 5 out of 9, and it is embedded between significant efforts to put forward ideas for the economy recovering and for finding green energies sources. Apart from the context and the little space and emphasis it has been given, it is the content of the statements on the theme that makes me suspect nothing new is likely to happen. Border control, skills and economical criteria, “path to citizenship” are the catch-phrases that resounded again, upholding a global perspective that is overall not so different from the “three-legged stool” dating back to the ’80s.

 

I’m not saying that it won’t help somehow, for example opening some larger access to citizenship and integration. A deep structural revision of the “broken-system”, though, is still to be expected in the long-run. For the moment a handful of details and substantial questions remains open, as for the timing for undocumented people to get some form of visa and above all the general approach to future entrances, namely whether they should be based on a strictly economic and skill criterion or, as it traditionally has been, or on the attention to families’ unity.

 

These changes will be a step toward the evolution of the US society into one of the first cosmopolitan model of nation, exactly as the naturalization of millions during the ’90s due to Immigration Reform and Control Act, has contributed to create the climate of cultural diversity we are all living in now.

 

But before these ex-illegal new-citizens will do another grueling job to enlarge again the boundaries of inclusion, we should expect struggles and enterprises to shelter progresses which are always under attack. The driving-license debate is now stepping in the State of Arizona and it is emblematic of how a bottom-based claiming for rights can make up for lack of political initiative and create a network of achievements that won’t be easy to dismantle.  

 

Once again, individual and local efforts can effectively parallel governmental initiatives, and sometimes reach even further.

When people count more than words

Obama’s State of the Union speech is awaited as a decisive turning-point. After the hints told in the Inauguration Speech the debate went on and both parties elaborated more defined programs. They are clearly oriented and, for somebody, unsatisfactory as long as they repeat the major bits of the Senate’s proposal.

Political scientist Victoria DeFrancesco Soto notes that the showdown would happen now or never. President Obama has been re-elected with the crucial endorsement of  Latinos, it started his second mandate with a progressive agenda, he is supported by public opinion and even by some Republicans concerned with the issue. It is the beginning of the mandate, and people can forget some unpopular decision: all the more so he can act freely, since he hasn’t to fear of not winning another election.

Nonetheless, I’m still not sure that something very revolutionary will turn out. The direction of the development is not so unpredictable and it seems uneasy to me that the blueprint forged by the Senate will be overthrown. Even if Obama is suggesting to widen consistently the reform, I think it is possible that this purpose would prove unsuccessful and then the blame will be put on someone undefined: political system, disagreement between the parties, and so on.

Furthermore, activists for immigrants rights disagree too on whether citizenship should be a key element of the overhaul or not. I’ve already indicated that this can be very controversial and complicated, but there is no doubt regarding the fact that different agents have different views. I’m not too happy about it, but since Obama himself has called CEOs to discuss the issue I would believe that economy is going to have a big deal, and I don’t know how much citizenship can be part of economical interests. Once again, what is likely to happen for me is a symbolical reform: granted, a path toward citizenship, but “equal”, that implicitly means long and probably expensive.

What I want to point to, though, are not Obama’s speech that we are all curious to listen to, also for what regards other questions. Immigration is a matter of actual life, of physical movement and bodily experience, and what is truly momentous is how these lives and these bodies testify in front of the media and the national conscience. These time two undocumented people have been invited to the discourse: it is painful to admit, but that’s something that in Italy wouldn’t happen so easily. In my country, even if the problem is not less consistent, these people still haven’t political visibility and are simply supposed to be “criminal” or rather “not existent” at all. No matter if we meet them daily in the streets.

The faces and the stories of one Alan Aleman and one Ambar Pinto, together with the activity of associations like Edu-Futuro, can help bring a country even further than shy political moves do.