Britain’s prime minister knows such a plan won’t work. He’s cosying up with Giorgia Meloni for an entirely different reason
One cold, late evening in the winter of 1999, I was waiting for a train at Termini station in Rome when I noticed an old lady struggling with her suitcases and offered to help. “Signorina,” her voice trembled ever so slightly. “Fortunately there are still youngsters like you. I was very worried. This station is full of Albanian muggers. It’s an invasion.”
Back then I had no courage to tell her I was Albanian. One of the lucky ones – a student on a scholarship, unlike my fellow citizens who worked as cleaners, builders, carers and sex workers. We made headlines in Italy in those days. Sometimes as a nation of smugglers, pimps and burglars; sometimes as failed individuals, socialised under a different system, who struggled to integrate; and sometimes as corrupt, lazy people unable to implement in their own country the formula for success they had seen beamed over the Adriatic Sea on Silvio Berlusconi’s television channels.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/23/italy-migrant-pact-albania-keir-starmer-britain-giorgia-meloni
Author : Lea Ypi
Publish date : 2024-09-23 06:00:32
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