Italy’s first black senator and the problem of immigration doublespeak
Italy’s nationalist party focuses on illegal immigration to downplay the fact that its policies also punish people who enter the country legally
Toni Iwobi, an immigrant from Nigeria who was elected Italy’s first black senator in Sunday’s general election, is adamant that the nationalist Lega party he represents is neither racist nor anti-immigrant.
“I want to stress that the League isn’t against immigration as such — nobody in this world can stop people moving, it’s in the human DNA,” the 62-year-old businessman told The Guardian newspaper just days after his historic victory. “But we are against illegal immigration.”
Iwobi came to Italy on a student visa in the late 1970s and later became an Italian citizen. “During that period over 40 years ago, coming here meant needing a visa,” he added. “My party is fighting to restore legal immigration.”
It’s the classic party line from the Lega, Italian for “League,” which claimed 18 percent of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary election.
But this emphasis on illegal immigration conveniently obfuscates the fact that the Lega’s policies also punish immigrants who are living in the country legally. The party has repeatedly blocked efforts to grant citizenship rights to young people raised and educated in Italy, and it often conflates immigration with radical Islam in order to justify its nationalist policies.
Young, lawful immigrants denied citizenship rights
Last year, the Lega helped defeat an immigration reform bill that would have granted citizenship rights to children born in Italy to immigrant parents — or who arrived before age 12 — once they have attended at least five years of Italian schooling.
The party says it does not support granting citizenship to just anyone born on Italian soil. Rather, “citizenship is something that must be requested,” and “before receiving citizenship immigrants must integrate.”
But while the proposed legislation met both requirements, the Lega not only refused to vote in favor of it — it held signature drives to oppose it. The government was dissolved in December without a vote being held on the matter.
The party also falsely claims that foreign youth have the same protections as Italian citizens. Besides being subjected to travel and voting restrictions, the current law leaves many of immigrant youth feeling isolated and alienated from their peers because they identify as Italian but know the state doesn’t see them that way.
Neither they nor their families have done anything wrong — let alone illegal — making it clear the Lega’s problem is with all immigrants, not just unlawful ones.
Extreme campaign rhetoric and Islamophobic remarks
To justify this nationalist position, the party conflates migrants with criminals and immigration with radical Islam.
One of the party’s 2018 campaign slogans was “Stop the Invasion,” which was accompanied by promises of border walls, sea patrols, and refusals to aid migrant boats in distress. Prior to and during the campaign, party leader Matteo Salvini also called for mass deportations and promised that if successful, his party would expel 500,000 migrants during its first year leading the government.
“Italy needs a mass cleaning,” he said in February 2017. “Street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood and by strong methods if necessary, because there are entire parts of Italy that are out of control.”
Later, in July, he sought to portray Italy as under siege from immigrants not only from abroad but also from within.
“The Islam of today is a danger,” Salvini said in July. “I don’t want it. […] A Salvini government puts a stop to any irregular and abusive Islam in Italy.”
But unlike neighboring France, Italy has not suffered any Islamic extremist terrorist attacks. It “does not have as acute a radicalization problem and has seen lower foreign fighter flows to Syria” than other European states, according to a report from the Combating Terror Center at the West Point Academy in the U.S.
This could all change, though, if Italy fails to properly integrate second-generation Muslim immigrants, the report warned. Salvini’s campaign rhetoric doesn’t inspire much confidence on that front.
“The emergency is this country is to clean, return to the rules, secure the borders, punish and expel,” he said as a follow-up to his anti-Islam remarks in July.
Hypocritical policy positions
Despite all its talk of cleaning up the country and returning to the rules, the Lega platform completely fails to address corruption, the Mafia or any of the money laundering scandals that have plagued Italy in recent years.
Over the past few days many prominent Italians have also called out Iwobi for defending a party that has stoked racial and religious tensions in order to gain electoral success. On Tuesday, Italian soccer star Mario Balotelli posted an Instagram story that showed Iwobi and Salvini posing together in “Stop the Invasion” t-shirts.
“Maybe I’m blind or maybe they haven’t told him yet that he’s black,” Balotelli, who was born in Sicily to immigrants from Ghana, captioned the photo. “But shame!!!”
The comment sparked a media firestorm and resulted in public back-and-forth in Italy, but it also managed to cut quickly to the heart of the matter.
It’s a succinct reminder that by claiming to only oppose illegal immigration, but then refusing to grant social and political rights to migrants who have entered the country legally, Lega employs a form a doublespeak that sanitizes its true position.
As the magazine Wired Italia observed: More than an attack on Iwobi, Balotelli’s comment is “an invitation to not let ourselves be taken for fools.”
Sign up to receive Kheiro Magazine straight to your inbox.
