“Tourists relaxing this summer near Milan’s magnificent cathedral could be forgiven for choking on their overpriced cappuccinos at the sight of armed soldiers on patrol,“ says Adrian Michaels in The Daily Telegraph. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has ordered the deployment of 3,000 troops across Italy as part of a law-and-order campaign. Berlusconi, who regained power for a third term in April on a pledge to make Italy safer, has “successfully conflated violent crime and illegal immigration to justify a raft of hardline measures”.
Berlusconi’s government has already drawn criticism from the Vatican, and some European bodies over immigration issues, but so far the only climbdown has been over the fingerprinting of gypsy children under 14, says Sue Reid in the Daily Mail. Berlusconi’s compulsory census of Italy’s 160,000 Roma people is still underway; this week the Italian parliament authorised six-year prison sentences for immigrants who lie about their identity.
Thousands of migrants have entered the country since the dismantling of EU border controls in 2004, and Berlusconi has produced a “dossier of dubious figures alleging foreigners were involved in half of Italy’s attempted murders, muggings and robberies“. His actions have been compared to Nazi registration of Jews and gypsies. The scale of recent immigration, a stagnant job market and the “collapse of what was a previously a powerful progressive and anti-fascist culture” have created a “fearful” atmosphere, says Seumas Milne in The Guardian.
But crime is lower than in the 1990s and below that of Britain. What the government should have done was provide decent housing and jobs, clamp down on the exploitation of migrant workers and support economic development in Europe’s neighbours. Instead, Italy has been “gripped by an ominous and retrograde spasm”.
Italy is “rife with crime and illegal immigration”; it has “every right to crack down on these ills”, counters Ross Clark in the Daily Express. Illegal immigration undermines the job market, puts a strain on public services and adds to the crime figures. “You don’t have to be a Berlusconi fan to conclude that it is about time we, too, took the immigration laws more seriously.“