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Today in Italy comes into force the security decree, a brutal law that criminalizes undocumented immigrants and makes it impossible for people who already live a difficult and often dramatic situation to give birth in a hospital, to recognize their children, to find a home, to send money to their families, to ask the aid of the police if they are victims of a crime. On top of that they may end up in jail for having done absolutely nothing.

Hundreds of thousands of people who are illegal immigrants, not because they commit offenses, but simply because they are forced to work illegaly to survive, become virtually non-people without the least civil rights guaranteed by all international conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Italy is a signatory. In this, the legalization of caretakers certainly isn't enough to redeem a law that's criminal in itself, and above all a sick propaganda maneuver devoid of any real utility. 

While in Italy you can see the first results of this great law, as people die because they are afraid to go to the doctor, girls as Fatima and women as Nabruka commit suicide for fear of being arrested and rejected and an older woman house is confiscated for aiding and abetting illegal migration, is emblematic that the coming into force of this shameful decree coincide with the anniversary of the tragedy of Marcinelle. When  we, italians, were the illegal immigrants despised and discriminated throughout Europe, in 1956, 136 Italian migrants in Belgium died in the collapse of a mine. They did a hard work obviously devoid of the minimum guarantees of safety, because when there are people without rights, you can exploit and kill them without any restraint. 

At that commemoration, there were at least two dissonant voices within the government majority. One is the chairman of the House Gianfranco Fini. "Workers must be respected even if they don't have documents - said Fini - The Italian emigration was not only characteristic of our south. How many northerners emigrated. That I'd like to remember to those politicians who today in Italy represent some of the voters in the north. Marcinelle teaching is to respect immigrants: the Italians who worked in Belgium were not clandestines because that word had not yet been invented, but were often regarded as different, the 'black faces' and in some cases there was the inscription 'Italians do not enter'. Their fate was not much different from the fate that now have foreign workers in Italy. Then, it is clear that we need to integrate them to ensure security but we must respect them as men and as women."

It seems that there is humanity even in Berlusconi's government. Unfortunately hardly will be able to take the upper hand against the racist impulse of the League and against the interests of Berlusconi, who will concede everything to the League provided that they continue to support him despite his continuous attempts to destroy democracy. An today in Italy, despite the coming into force of the most shameful law in the history of the Republic, as usual, a strong opposition is lacking.