An Italian Town's White (No Foreigners) Christmas

[formercia]

People walk past Northern League posters in Milan that read "Now They Live in Reservations"
Stefano Rellandini / Reuters

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1943676,00.html

Italy's influential Northern League Party has stood out over the past decade for its particular knack in finding new (and not-so-new) ways of offending people based on country of origin and color of skin. In 2003, Umberto Bossi, founder of the party, which once espoused separatism, told an interviewer that police should open fire on the boatloads of undocumented Africans arriving on Italian shores, calling the would-be immigrants "bingo-bongos." Other Northern League pols have proposed everything from separate trains for immigrants to banning the building of new mosques and even prohibiting the serving of kebabs and other non-Italian food in city centers.

The latest swipe by the Northern League attempts some kind of holiday spirit. The league-led city council in Coccaglio, a small town east of Milan, has launched a two-month sweep — from Oct. 25 to Dec. 25 — to ferret out foreigners without proper residency permits. It has been dubbed Natale Bianco, or "White Christmas." (See portraits of Italians in America.)

Claudio Abiendi, a longtime Lega Nord member who leads security policy on the city council, told the daily La Repubblica that he came up with the initiative as a way "to start cleaning things up" in Coccaglio, a town of 7,000 with some 1,500 immigrant residents. "For me, Christmas isn't the celebration of hospitality, but rather of Christian tradition and our identity," he said. Abiendi also told the paper that approximately half of the 150 inspections already carried out turned up people who no longer had a right to reside in Italy. He said he would report them to national authorities.

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[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Wow. The GOP now has foreign office.

How exciting is that?

[Blue_Tires]

2. irony is SO dead after that "reservations" poster...

[izquierdista]

3. Hospitality

I'm sure there is no room at the inn for pregnant Jews, either.

[imdjh]

4. It's a great poster.

I know emotional detachment is difficult for some people, especially where hypocrisy is involved, but from a strictly ad-savvy angle the poster is a wonderful statement on the issue.

[AzNick]

5. Extreme right parties have been there in Europe for decades

Did you guys forget that Chirac beat LePen in the runoff election of 2002?

[47of74]

6. Taking a page from Bill-O-The-Clown's book

Namely the War on Christmas (TM).

[AspenRose]

7. The indians were here FIRST, moron! They weren't the "crashers" here

If you're going to attempt to be xenophobic, at least get the history straight....

[Daveparts still]

8. I think

That what the poster is trying to say, was look what happen to Native Americans because of immigration.

[AspenRose]

9. A lot of those immigrants were from Italy

Xenophobes are idiots

[JonQ]

10. I think the posters were saying that uncontrolled immigration leads to

genocide of the natives.

As it did with the natives here.

And this was italy, the indians were not there first, or at all.