When we think of illegal immigration, we tend to only think of the problem here in the United States. But other countries have the same problem. They battle illegal immigrants every day, just like the U.S. Perhaps we could benefit from looking at what other countries are doing to curb the problem.
"Miriana spends her nights sleeping in a park, and her days hunched on a stoop outside a Madrid shop, begging for money. The young woman admits that she earned more in Italy, where she lived for a year. But for this Romanian immigrant, who is also ethnically Roma (or gypsy), the decision to move to Spain was easy.
"Here, the people are better," she explains in broken Spanish. "They don't have as much hate."
Both Spain and Italy, situated across from Africa on the Mediterranean coast, have faced huge influxes of illegal immigrants over the past couple of years – 18,000 intercepted by Spain last year alone, and 12,000 by Italy so far this year. But their governments, though sharing a conviction that the problem urgently needs to be curbed, have taken different approaches to reach that common goal.
While Spain struggles to find the balance between limiting immigration and protecting human rights, Italy has implemented state of emergency measures and even fingerprinting of Roma – measures decried as "xenophobic" by the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammarberg.
"The Spanish government has a very strict policy," says Roberto Malini, president of the Italian human rights organization EveryOne. "The Italians have an intimidatory policy: the idea is to scare immigrants, so that when they go home, they can tell their countrymen that Italy is no place for foreigners."
from the Christian Science Monitor
Spain, Italy: Two Tactics for Tackling Illegal Immigration
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