Italy cracks down on the dreaded Gypsy non-problem. Granted, I live in the United States so it's difficult for me to accurately gauge the extent of Italy's issue with the Roma or Gypsies. I understand that since Romania and other Eastern European countries gained access to the EU, there have not surprisingly, been larger waves of immigration. Which from what I gather, was already an assumed outcome during the creation of the EU. That said, some quick thoughts.
1) This really strikes me as a problem caused by a lack of assimilation. There certainly are Roma in the United States but you never, ever really hear about it. Mostly because they've been permitted into the culture. Not so much in Europe....
"These are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me," said Riccardo De Corato, who is Milan's vice mayor from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling party and who is in charge of handling the camps. He later added: "Our final goal is to have zero Gypsy camps in Milan."
The Roma began their migrations into Europe in AD 500. At this point, bandying about charges of not being European strikes me as pretty questionable logically, not to mention somewhat offensive.
2) Precisely how many Roma are we talking about here? The article asserts that there are 800,000 Romanians living in Italy, "a substantial portion of them Roma". Now granted, that's a population that has increased rapidly of late. However, as of 2008 according to the World Bank, Italy had a population of 59,832,179. Even assuming that the Romanians were counted in this census, which is questionable, that works out to being roughly one Romanian out of every 75 people. Since we're speaking specifically to the Roma and not Romanians in general, we're essentially talking about a "a substantial portion" of one person out of 75. Narrow this number down further, to the number of Roma that are actually engaged in crime and I have to really question the justification for this massive campaign against a specific ethnic group.
Oh wait! Like they said! They're dark skinned people! Gotcha!
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