The Northern League is a key part of Italy’s center-rightgovernment. It wants to make illegal immigration punishable by up tofour years in prison, require doctors to report to police any patientswho are in Italy illegally, and create separate classrooms for Italianand immigrant children.
The northern city of Padua boasts a history of glorious guests — Giotto painted there, and Galileo taught mathematics.
Butnow, nobody wants outsiders. Residents allege out loud that immigrantsbring only disease, and a local Northern League politician claims that,with all their different languages, they bring only chaos.
Michael— he wouldn’t give his full name — is a 29-year-old Nigerian. He saysthat every time he takes a bus, he sits at the back. Italians, he says,look at him as if he were an alien creature.
The language Italians hear from the mass media and politicians isdisparaging about “the Other.” One Northern League minister callsAfricans “bingo bongos.” Roma people — or gypsies, as they’re sometimescalled — are often depicted on television as kidnappers of whitechildren. And Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made internationalheadlines after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president by describinghim as young and “tanned.”
NPR is a hyper leftist, government funded Trojan horse posing as a source of objective news and the dissemination of “facts”. Clearly, they are not. — Ed.