Sixth Skype exchange/Wiki Page

Hi everybody!

Yesterday I spoke with Sharon about our FINAL PROJECT. As I have already written here, we would like to concentrate on illegal immigration in Italy and the USA. We realized that the topic is rather 'wide' so we decided to narrow it a little bit and focuse on the attitude which people and media show towards this issue.

Our Wiki page will be divided into 5 sections:

1. PART ONE: INTRODUCTION (Eleonora, English/Italian)

• What is 'illegal immigration'? (in general)
• About Group 16. Here I will put all our contacts (email addresses, Skype names, TAG used in del.icio.us....), so that if we need some information we will find it here :-)

2. PART TWO: THE ISSUE IN AMERICA (Stefania, English)

• General information about 'illegal immigration' in the USA: numbers (how many illegal immigrants are there in the US more or less?), nationalities (where do they mostly come from?), places (are there some specific States/areas where we find illegal immigrants?)
• Media's/people's opinion: in this section we could put two links (a forum and an article taken from an American newspaper) and see what people and media 'think' about illegal immigrants...And of course, we will try to understand WHY they have that particular attitude towards them :-)

3. PART THREE: THE ISSUE IN ITALY (Sharon, Italian)

• See above (PART TWO). These two parts should be as parallel as possible, so I think we'd better follow the same pattern for both of them. Of course, this section will concentrate on 'illegal immigration' in Italy...So the forum will be in Italian and the article taken from an Italian newspaper :-)

4. PART FOUR: COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES (Eleonora, English and Italian)

• Differencies and similarities in the two countries.
• Conclusion

5. PART FIVE: REFERENCES (Bibliography)

• Here we'll put all the URLs of the websites we got material from...:-)

Of course, we can add pictures, videos (and captions) or anything else!

Hope this is clear enough,

SEE YOU!

Fifth Skype exchange

Hi everybody!
After having spent the last weeks talking about politics and elections, this time we focused on another crucial issue: immigration.
As I wrote on the previous post, Sharon and I had already discussed briefly about it, but on Tuesday we went deeper into the matter and learnt more about this phenomenon in the two countries.

I must say it was quite an interesting conversation as the word 'immigration' has a very different meaning in Italy and USA. In the States basically everybody comes from somewhere else: let’s look for example at our peers at Dickinson. Most of them have foreign origins and their grandparents were often immigrants. America was born thanks to immigrants: they left their own countries, they settled in the ‘New Continent’, started a new life there and contributed to its economic growth. Therefore, it is pretty obvious that Americans and Italians usually have a different attitude towards immigration.
As Sarah said, Italy has known this issue only for the past 10-15 years. Traditionally, Italy was a ‘country of emigrants’ and only at the beginning of the 90’s it really turned into a ‘country of immigrants’. Sometimes I have the impression we still have to get used to different cultures living in the same place…And probably our politicians are not yet used to that, either, since they often have not been able to deal properly with immigration over these years.
On the contrary, America is well-known as a big melting pot where people from about 50 different nationalities live and work together. As I wrote before, many of them were born in the States, but there are also a lot of foreigners who move to the US to find a job and start a better life.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy for all of them to integrate in the American society. Sharon told me at the time they are having serious problems especially with Mexicans. They often cross the border without visa and documents, they do not speak English so all they can do to survive is selling drugs or robbing. This leads some Americans to have strong prejudices against them and sometimes to take advantage of them, too. In fact, above all in California Mexicans are usually discriminated and are forced to do the worst jobs for very low wages.
I told Sharon we are also having big problems especially with gypsies since they are very difficult to integrate (and maybe they did not want to, either). I am sure not all of them are criminals, nor I think they should all be sent away; but undoubtedly, their culture is so different from ours that it is hard to see a solution for this problem. I would not ask them to give up their traditions, it would be enough if they sent their children to school instead of let them begging and robbing on the streets.

When there are integration problems, there is less tolerance and racism is more likely to spread. Unfortunately, every now and then in both countries we still hear stories of natives who beat or insult immigrants; in the US, this happens more often in Southern States, where Mexicans and black people are sometimes discriminated.

After our long conversation, we came up with the conclusion that legal immigration is a precious source of work and cultural richness for our countries. The real problem is illegal immigration.
It is a problem for both the ‘host-country’ and the immigrants themselves, who often have to decide between breaking the law and starving. At the moment this is a crucial point in Italy as well as in America, so that is why we decided to concentrate on this issue in our final project.

I hope it all goes well and that you will find it interesting ;-)

See you!

Immigration

As soon as I began to think what I could write on this post, I realized I did not know much about the rules which regulate immigration in Italy. Of course, I remembered that the law called “Turco-Napolitano” had been substituted by “Bossi-Fini”, which had partially been changed by Prodi’s government. But I just had a faint idea of how they dealt with this issue, so I looked for more information on the Web and I found the following links (in Italian):

• Legge Bossi-Fini
• DDL Amato-Ferrero

The whole system seems quite complicated; what is clear is that every immigrant must have a job before coming to Italy, otherwise he/she cannot get the permission to stay here. The “Bossi-Fini” law provoked a lot of discussion since it was much more restrictive than the previous one (“Turco-Napolitano”). Moreover, I found out that it was also criticized by Amnesty International because it did not grant political asylum as it should have done according to international laws. Amato and Ferrero, who were part of Prodi's government, tried to cut the red tape for high-qualified foreigners and postponed the expiry date of work visas.

I think Italy does need immigrants. This is not just my opinion, it is simply a well- known fact. Take a look at this:

• L'immigrazione in Italia

Italy’s population grows thanks to foreign families. In 2004 immigrants paid taxes for 1.87 billion €; in 2005 they contributed to our GDP for 6.1%.
Just yesterday evening I heard on TV that Italian small companies cannot find plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, hairdressers, tailors and carpenters. In these fields there are a lot of jobs available, but it seems that Italians prefer studying or working in offices rather than “using their hands”. That is why artisans' associations are thinking to ask for workers coming from abroad; the same has already happened with nurses and caregivers.
I also think that immigrants who live, work and pay taxes here should have the right to vote. I have got one friend who was born in Romania but has been living here since he was 13. He attended the high school here, he has been working for an Italian company and paying taxes to the Italian state for almost 10 years now. Despite this, he cannot decide who he wants to be governed by because he does not have the Italian citizenship. I do not know how it works in other European countries, but honestly I find the situation here quite absurd.

The real problem is illegal immigration. I read Enrico’s post and I agree with him when he says that an illegal immigrant cannot do anything legal… So it is quite obvious that when you are desperate, you just end up robbing or trafficking in drugs if you want to survive.
I think the government should be more strict with people who break the law, no matter if foreigners or Italians. Gypsies who steal in houses or rape women MUST be punished as well as Italians who drive when they are drunk and crash against other cars. You make a mistake, you pay for it. It sounds quite simple, so why does it seem something impossible here?

Good question…

Ok, I will stop now :-)
See you on Monday!

Fourth Skype exchange

Hello everybody!
Here I am again to discuss my fourth Skype meeting which took place on Tuesday afternoon. This week we kept on talking about politics and elections in Italy and USA. Anyway, this time we went deeper into the issues each platform concentrates more on. Sharon asked me some questions about Berlusconi’s and Veltroni’s programs and when we switched to English we had a long conversation about American candidates.

As usual, we started talking in Italian and Sharon wanted to know more about Italy’s biggest problem: tax evasion. I explained her what the different governments tried to do in order to solve it and why the whole situation with taxes is so bad here, although this was quite a difficult issue to talk about. The system is pretty complicated and it was not easy to find the right words to give her an idea of how things work. Anyway, everything went well in the end :-)
We also discussed a little bit about immigration in general: she asked me if we have many immigrants in Italy, where they mostly come from etc…So we anticipated the topic we are supposed to focus on next week…Hope this will not be a problem :-P

As Sarah had asked us I had posted some questions about platforms on the forum, so I started from them when we began to talk in English. I have just answered these questions on our exchange page so I will not repeat the same things here ;-) I can only say that I got more information about American health care system and Sharon confirmed me what Chiara had told us in class.
For those who cannot afford insurance it is extremely expensive to get medical aid. Of course if you need assistance and you are not insured they will not let you die….But then you will have to pay for it for the rest of your life. Even calling an ambulance can cost thousands of dollars. It really sounds quite illogical to me: if I do not have insurance it means I cannot afford it, so how am I supposed to pay this huge amount of money?
Health care is a big problem in America and is a crucial issue in both Hillary’s and Obama’s platforms. The USA have always been well known for its private health care system…Now I am curious to see if things will change with the next president.
We agreed it is a real shame because in America there are a lot of excellent hospitals and doctors, but unfortunately only few people can take full advantage of them. It is absurd, isn’t it?

Ok, see you later for the post about immigration…

Third Skype exchange/Reflective blogging

Hi people!
Here I am again to reflect on my latest Skype meeting :-)

As always, at the beginning we started talking about what we did during the weekend and during class at university. It came as no surprise when Sharon told me that lately they have been focusing a lot on the elections (both in Italy and USA); actually, in these days 90% of the news on TV and magazines are about Obama, Hillary, Veltroni and Berlusconi ;-)
Therefore, it was pretty obvious that the core of our conversation was going to be the elections2008 and political issues in general.

The starting point of our discussion was the impression I had of the so-called political videos. Unfortunately, Sharon had not seen any of them so I more or less repeated what came out on Monday in class.
Then she asked me some questions about the previous Italian government and the candidates who are running for the new office. She told me she heard that Berlusconi has a high probability to win again, although most of the Italians she knows do not like him...(strange, isn't it?) :-)
Anyway, it is always difficult to talk about the political situation in Italy since it is really complicated!

When we moved to English, I asked her for further information about the American electoral system since I had been really struck by the difference between the popular and the electoral vote. In the end, we agreed that the “winner takes all” system might be pretty unfair, but it can be seen as a “necessary evil” to give the country the stability it needs.

As far as similarities are concerned, we noticed that both in the USA and in Italy the key word of these elections is CHANGE. It is clear that in both countries some wrong decisions were taken over the past years and now things cannot remain as they are. The only difference is that Americans still believe that changing is possible, whereas most Italians do not.
This point made me think a lot. Sharon told me that the majority of young people in the US are pretty excited about the elections. They are interested in political events, they try to be well-informed and seem eager to participate actively in their country’s social life.
Sad but true, in Italy is pretty much the contrary. Especially young people are generally disappointed about politics and I am sure many of them are not going to vote this time. I do understand them very well and actually I am also quite unhappy with most politicians (both left- and right-wing). However, I do not think that if you do not vote the situation will get better. And I do think that saying: “I do not care about voting because all politicians are the same” is quite superficial and, after all, not true. Whoever the Prime Minister will be, he/she will not probably be able to solve all Italy’s problems, but I am convinced that different electoral results can have quite different consequences.
Our vote is the only means we have to protect democracy and have our say. It is not much, but we should not forget that many people fought and sometimes died for this right….And in some countries they are still fighting and dying.

In conclusion, let’s spend a few words about our final project. In these months we have been exploring a lot of aspects regarding Italian and American culture, so it is hard to choose just one. I jumped back and read through the questionnaires again to get a clearer idea of what interests me most.
I would really like to learn more about the idea of family Americans generally have. Our peers overseas described American lifestyle as extremely stressful and career-oriented. I also noticed that in "Word Association" none of the Americans associated the words “family” or “mother” to American women.

From all this you might get the impression that nowadays family and children are a little bit in the background in American society. However, I read all the presentations on the Wiki and I saw that most American students have 2-3 brothers or sisters.
Are they just an exception or is the birth rate in the US (despite stress and career) higher than in Europe? Does the State help those women who have a family and a job? (i.e.: are places in nurseries easily available? Can women work part-time?) Do American parents spend a lot of time with their children? Do they think it is important to spend as much time as possible with their children?
I would like to answer these questions and compare the situations in the two countries. I think it could be interesting as the low number of births has been one of the most discussed issues in Italy lately. I wonder if in the US they have this problem as well. If so, I would like to know how they cope with it; if not, I would like to know how they prevented it.

See you on Monday!