You keep turning right politically.
You keep mishandling the immigration issue.
Granted, you’re right there, at the front of the problem. Immigrants from Africa keep coming to your shores, but there are ways to handle the problem.
Immigration from less developed areas is the leading problem we face today.
Technology has made the world smaller. People anywhere can see how much more there is elsewhere and they want to be part of it. They reason they live only once and so want the opportunities they are denied in their homelands because of their flawed political and economic institutions.
Man was born in Africa. We’re all Africans. I am African.
Advanced nations need to do more to assist the evolution of poorer nations, and thus help create conditions for those born there to commit to assist in their national betterment.
Until then, the desperate will risk their lives in search of a better life.
Until the needed structural changes come about in their homelands, we need to work with the immigrant.
Limits need to be set, of course, and every nation has a right to do so, but show kindness and tolerance to the desperate knocking at your door and begging to be let in. Begging for respite.
You are a creative nation. You gave us the Renaissance. The world knows of your enormous creative potential.
Do not turn back on it. Exercise it. Let it shine fully. Come up with new solutions.
I worry that your turning right politically is countering the creative energies you are capable of.
I worry that some of your politicians have openly embraced Putin.
I worry that you sympathize with a leader like Viktor Orban, in Hungary, who openly states his nation does not want diversity. Is that sensible to say in a world growing more and more diverse?
Is that not being like the ostrich and burying your head in the sand?
Dare to lead, Italy! Dare to embrace diversity and it will enrich you.
Have faith in your capacity to adapt, to invent, to show the world the way we should go.
Do not flinch from your responsibilities as a nation with such rich history.
Sure, there was a time when you embraced fascism, but you evolved.
Do not go back.
You are a highly capable nation. Be true to your heritage. Meet the hard problems of our time.
Choose leaders who value and promote independence of thought, who challenge you to use your brain, not to blindly follow them.
Do not take your cue from leaders like Trump in America who has made every effort to turn off dialogue in our land.
Rise, Italy, rise and dare to light up the torch of reason like you once did.
Oscarvaldes.medium.com
PS: Do not do like Britain who, in one of their darkest moments, recently came up with a scheme to send unwelcome immigrants to Rwanda.
