Italy To Expel Immigrants Without Trial..Another Look At The Future

Yet another sign that the European worm is turning....Italy,with its socialist left EU friendly government has passed an emergency decree allowing the expulsion of immigrants considered `a menace to society' by police prefects without trial.

The catalyst for this is a major crime wave in Italy by immigrants, highlighted by a brutal assault on an Italian Naval officer's wife that made headlines throughout the country.

The accused perpetrator,a 24-year-old Romanian gypsy (Roma) named Nicolae Romolus Mailat, was arrested for the assault, robbery and murder of Giovanna Reggiani, who died last week after two days in a coma.

The Romanians have apparently become a problem in Italy since Romania joined the EU in January of this year.

EU citizens are allowed to travel freely in all EU countries, and Romanians have flocked to Italy and now make up the biggest foreign community there.

Romanians top recent crime statistics for serious crimes like murder, rape and robbery.Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said Romanians accounted for 75% of the city's arrests on those charges from January to September.

The emergency decree allowing the expulsion of potentially dangerous EU immigrants was issued Wednesday night and has already been signed by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

This became something of a political football in Italy, with conservatives like ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia (FI) party and Gianfranco Fini of the National Alliance (AN) heavily criticizing the Prodi government for being soft of crime. In response, a shaken Premier Romano Prodi pledged such incidents would "never happen again".

According to Italian Police Chief Antonio Manganelli,Italian authorities already have lists drawn up of immigrants whose criminal record makes them likely candidates for expulsion. And remember, police prefects will be able to do this without trial.

Manganelli was quoted as saying that the roundups and expulsions would be done "with absolute respect for human dignity, avoiding a witch-hunt and without criminalizing ethnic groups".

But meanwhile, Gypsy (Roma) encampments are being bulldozed all around Rome, and the Police Prefect of rome, Carlo Mosca said that the rest of the would "soon be evacuated."

Even more interesting, in response to the hard line Italian stance, Romania is cooperating...partly because wages sent by Romanian immigrants back to their home country are a significant source of earnings. Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella and his Romanian counterpart Tudor Chiuariu agreed on Thursday that most of the convicted Romanians, who now form a large part of Italy's prison population, will be sent back to serve out their sentences in Romania, and that Romania will honor the verdicts of the Italian criminal courts.

Two points come to mind. First, Americans might consider this, like the recent French policy on illegal immigrants as an interesting model to study in dealing with our own illegal alien problem (and yes,I know...these are legal immigrants Italy is dealing with, but the other parts of the story closely parallel our own).

And second, don't be surprised to see other EU countries doing exactly the same thing in the future...to a lot of Europe's Muslims. There's a very strong nativist wind blowing on the continent these days.

Ralph Peters may have a point when he says that many of Europe's Muslims may be lucky if they just end up being deported, if current trends continue.