The bill would lower immigration quotas, revoke relevant agreements with Third World nations, and allow the Italian coast guard to fire on boats they claim are smuggling immigrants into the country.

An estimated 2 million of Italy's 57 million people are classified as immigrants. Many come from North Africa and Albania, and others from Asia. Some in the Italian ruling class call for more immigration as a way to drive down wages and undercut union resistance. Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema of the Democratic Party of the Left attacked the bill for its "isolationism." Other opponents draw parallels with the policies of other rightist politicians like Jörg Haider in Austria, and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France.

In other European capitals, governments--including those in which social democratic parties are dominant--are also taking aim at immigrants' rights. The British Labour government of Anthony Blair has just enacted an Immigration and Asylum Act expressly designed to make applications for asylum more difficult. Under this legislation those seeking asylum will receive vouchers worth around $58 per person every week, in place of cash benefits. A detention center for applicants has been opened. Those whose cases are considered weaker can be sent to prison.

The number applying for asylum in the United Kingdom grew from 5,900 in 1987 to 71,160 in 1999. Using a similar law, the German capitalist rulers lowered the number of asylum applications there from 166,000 in 1995 to 90,000 last year.

The British rulers especially aim this law--which comes on top of immigration laws that are already severely restrictive--at immigrants of Roma, or gypsy, nationality. Politicians and the capitalist media slander Roma as "beggars."

The governments of Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden are among others in Europe that deny asylum to the Roma. Described as a "stateless people," the Roma live throughout central and eastern Europe and number at least 8 million. They are subject to systematic and vicious discrimination. A New York Times article summarized the opinion of Claude Cahn of the European Roma Rights center in Budapest: "All European societies regard the darker-skinned Roma as alien."

The prime minister of the former Slovakian government described Roma as "mental retards." Amnesty International has prepared a report describing "punitive" raids by police using dogs against Roma settlements in Slovakia.

In the town of Avlovce Nad Uhom, Roma interviewed by the New York Times described facing discrimination by local merchants and violence by rightist skinhead gangs.

This discrimination is intensifying as the economic crisis worsens throughout much of eastern Europe. Slovak government representative Vincent Danihel said that Roma unemployment stands at "between 90 and 100 percent."

"We want to work, but there is no work," said Cyril Horvath in Udnany, Slovakia. "When you show up, they take one look at you, and that's it. They take only whites."

"And they're surprised that Roma go abroad?" commented one Roma man.  
 
 
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