Open Letter: Solidarity with the Romanian Community in Italy

When fear becomes a fixation

To all our Romanian brothers and sisters – the largest immigrant community in Italy – and to all those who today are branded as the cause of the lack of security in Italy, we want to reaffirm publicly our solidarity and our support as a Missionary Congregation that strives to live daily the invitation of our founder, Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini who said: “I believe that the first duty for the Church is to keep vigil that the immigrant (whatever his country of origin) never falls victim of anguish or despair without the help of a friendly support, without the commitment of all religious confessions, in his process of integration in the country of arrival.”
After one of your countrymen murdered Giovanna Reggiani in Rome, many voices were raised in anger and confusion. Politicians, common folks, even ‘church people’ raised their voice demanding to stop the immigration influxes into Italy.
Many pontificated that there should be no place in Italy for those who make their livelihood stealing, raping and killing. Too many came out saying that the Italian cities had become the targets of too many immigrants from East Europe who arrive without any sort of control. Many have accepted the fact that having to face a “dirty, ugly and evil” sector of society, we must stop being ‘nice’ (is ‘bad” better?) and we have to stop (especially those priests who ‘dream’ about living all together in harmony) preaching about welcome and tolerance. We must stop looking for channels of dialogue with those who are different. We must defend ourselves, stop the aggression and deport the Romanians. (Almost no one seems to pause and clarify these statements and have forgotten the Rom woman who lay down on the asphalt in front of a bus to denounce Giovanna Reggiani’s killer who is from her country). The notion of ‘self defense’ is becoming in reality a ‘manhunt’ (it does not matter that he is innocent, he must pay because of his ethnicity) as it has shamefully happened in the Roman section of Tor Bella Monaca.
These visceral reactions, fanned by politicians who are after easy consensuses, are based upon the pseudo-foundation that the Italians are at war under the attack of undocumented … immigrants … refugees … foreigners who are all criminals. It is a victory of confusion and demagogy which, in time of crisis, find many followers! It is a time of shortcut propositions to resolve everything and now: let us dismantle the gypsies’ camps, deport the Romanians, (who will be next?), close the borders (but is not Romania part of the UE?), let us close ourselves in and we will no longer be afraid … They are all cheaply-sold illusions because reality tells us that immigration cannot be stopped and that Europe needs it. Who speaks of immigration as an ‘evitable evil’ makes a double mistake: because it is not evitable and because, in itself, it is not an evil. Of course we must better control and regulate the immigration influxes, we must assure the safety of all citizens,  we must apply the Charter of Values, of Citizenship and integration, but we cannot accomplish this by accusing indiscriminately entire communities (Rom, Romanians, Albanians) because of a few criminals.
Back in 1898 Monsignor Scalabrini had already branded as racist the reactions expressed against the Italian immigrants in reaction to the crime committed by an Italian anarchist: “I have another reason for addressing you in these days about our emigration : a feeling of pity and a sense of indignation. The recent deplorable crime carried out by an Italian anarchist on a noble and innocent victim, who had already suffered so much, has, in many countries, furnished the rabble — blinded by racial hatred and ill-concealed anger against foreign workers who may be more skilled and more appreciated — with a pretext for threatening, persecuting, and hunting down Italians. Our countrymen, who are forced to live in the midst of so many dangers, should know that their mother country watches over them with solicitude and know that, in most cases, they are good and hard working, that she appreciates and loves them like her own living members and that she does not confuse them with the few criminals who hide like snakes among the flowers. ”
Bishop Scalabrini writing to Pope Leo XIII in 1901 after a trip to the United States remarked that very few realized “that immigration is great resource, a great gift for the country … They see it as a charity problem. It must be transformed into the notion of a positive element so that positive conditions, which are human conditions, will be achieved.”
Again, in the words of Bishop Scalabrini, legislation in the countries of immigrations has “the tendency of considering the great global phenomenon of human migration as an abnormality, more than a natural right and surround it with so many ties that they almost smother it … Now, experience shows that policing measures do not stop, just redirect from ours to other ports, the migratory masses, making more painful and more expensive the exodus of our countrymen. Artificial obstacles do not hold back currents, but they make them swelling up, increasing them and making their impact more harmful …”
            Even and especially today, in our fearful multiethnic and multicultural societies, in the European Union’s cities, foreigners must be seen not as a problem, but as valuable resources. For this reason we will never insist enough on the need of teaching about relationship, encounter, living together … without tiring of explaining the complexity of the phenomenon of migration and denouncing easy generalizations and harmful stigmatizations.

Rome, November 7, 2007

Fr. Lorenzo Prencipe (CSER – Rome)
For the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles