It's not easy being green

 Kermit knew what he was talking about when he sang his infamous song on the Muppet Show. So you may be wondering if I’m smoking any illegal substances or you may just be wondering what this has to do with Italians…well I’m getting to that point. What I mean is that “it’s not easy being the minority” in any country.

History is currently repeating itself (as it typically does) but just in another variance in Italy right now. Illegal African Immigrants are flocking to Italy for jobs picking fruit and other crops just so they can provide for their families. What is casting a murky shadow on this “job filling” is that some native Italians cannot find work, but even worse than that is most of the crops are owned by mafia or people affiliated with them.

This past January, riots broke out in my mother’s native region of Calabria over what else, racism. It only takes a few ignorant humans or one match to start the fire.  According to a Time online article, Africans were shot at with pellet guns thus launching outrage among the immigrant community. Most of these communities, by the way, are temporary. These are slums not unlike the tent cities being erected in Haiti currently because their homes were destroyed. The living conditions are very similar as well.

These people, or a majority of them, are honest and hard-working just trying to find work so they can provide for their families. Many of them are being suckered into providing the mafia in which they are dealing with a good sum of their wages or are required to pay a fee to them because they are giving them work.  The Pope, who has a major presence in Italy, even asked the citizens to go easy on illegal immigrants as they are humans too. Italy is quickly out-doing Britain on its amount of immigrants to the country but it still remains a good portion of native born Italians.

This is where the problem lies. With all the encouragement in the world from Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi (who I’m sure I will bash in another blog entry), anti-immigration isn’t a new thing being pushed among their society.  Many Italians have compared it to the Native Americans being forced off of their reservations here in America, but this clearly is an over-exaggeration.

So, without me naming names, have you noticed any similarities here? Oh, say to America and its illegal Mexican immigrants.  For years, we have said that “they take away our jobs”, “they’re dangerous”, or “it’s just not legal”. So why don’t we make it legal? Is there anything really wrong with people from underdeveloped and possibly even corrupt countries going to another country for work? This work also being usually labor intensive and not popular among the country’s native citizens but is something that they don’t mind doing. This then produces a stigma, made up of racist remarks, branding people who are already struggling consequently making life even harder for them.

I’m not an expert on immigration laws or the like. I do know this: racism doesn’t make the situation any better. Thinking you’re better than somebody else because of where you’re from, what social class you belong to, or because of your culture is ignorance. I was raised to believe that we can all coexist as long as we keep open minds and hearts. Everybody should have an equal opportunity at everything in life because we are all people. What do you think?

Grazie,

Nancy