Posted on 05/30/2002 5:48:29 PM PDT by Map Kernow
Gondoliers blocked the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge in Venice yesterday after going on an indefinite strike against illegal immigration.
The gondoliers said immigrants were making the city unsafe and their association said all 400 members were on strike and about 200 had taken part in the blockade. It said hundreds of immigrants had settled in Venice and they lived by illegally selling tourist trinkets, copies of fashion accessories and pirate CDs.
Immigrants harboured tricksters and fraudsters who took advantage of elderly people and were prepared to assault people who tried to intervene. "We are asking for the authorities simply to take account of the situation," said one gondolier, Giovanni Giudice.
The insular attitude of Venetians has been fertile ground for the xenophobic and populist politics of the anti-immigration Northern League party.
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In Italy's case, primary sources for illegals are North Africa (especially Morocco and Tunisia) and the Balkans (especially Albania). As you can also see, they're heavily Muslim, and those ones have started doing things like demanding the "right" to wear headscarves to school, demanding that a Renaissance masterpiece depicting Muhammad being cast into hell be obliterated, etc.---that's all while they're driving the violent crime rate up in Italy of course... (I have friends in Italy---they HATE the "clandestini" or illegal immigrants!)
It is also fertile ground for self preservation, unlike the suicidal, "cosmopolitan" attitude found elsewhere.
Gosh, you tell me. Every time anyone raises the issue of uncontrolled immigration, if he's not met with cries of "nativism" or even "racism," he's shunted aside with platitudes and non sequiturs about how America is a "nation of immigrants," how the illegals are "doing jobs Americans won't do," etc.
Bottom line: there're some real bigwigs profiting both politically and financially from uncontrolled and illegal immigration, and THEY are the ones whose views on the immigration matter count, not us.
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