From the Washington Post:
A foreign mafia has come to Italy and further polarized the migration debate
By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli, June 25
In a country that has fought for decades to weaken its homegrown mafia, a foreign crime group is gathering strength.
The group’s members are Nigerian. They hold territory from the north in Turin to the south in Palermo. They smuggle drugs and traffic women, deploying them as prostitutes on Italy’s streets. They find new members among the caste of wayward migrants, illicitly recruiting at Italian government-run asylum centers.
Investigators and justice officials say the Nigerian mafia, as it’s called here, has capitalized on half a decade of historic migration — a scenario merging crime and migrants in a manner that nationalist politicians in Europe and beyond have long warned about.
As Italy’s politics swing to the right, the country is contending not only with a foreign mafia but also with a divisive question: Are long-held migration fears coming to fruition? …
For the far right’s opponents, the Nigerian mafia has proved to be a trickier case — a problem that is politically risky to play down but that they say is being exploited as a cudgel against all migrants. They note that the Nigerian mafia primarily occupies immigrant neighborhoods, preying on those residents in a way that may feel familiar to Italians who have lived under the mob.
In a speech in April, Pope Francis — whose migration advocacy runs counter to the Italian government’s stance — made the case that delinquents can be found anywhere and that the mafia is “ours — made in Italy.”
“It was not Nigerians who invented the mafia,” he said.
The Pope went on to explain that when he watches Mars Attacks!, he always roots for the Martians to exterminate the humans due to what Anatomically Modern Humans had done to the Neanderthals. His Holiness then began recounting to the assembled press “the tragic history of the Amalekites,” but a worried-looking Archbishop Ganswein suddenly reminded him of a pressing appointment before the Pontiff could complete his thought.
Nationalists and strongmen have long portrayed migration as a source of danger, saying that people crossing borders might be intent on terrorism. Data from some countries, such as the United States, show those claims are overstated. But the emergence of a new foreign mafia strikes at some of the most emotional chords in a country still traumatized by its so-called mafia wars. …
Criminals, he said, have always crossed borders.
“When Italians went to America,” he said, “they brought crime, too.”
Immigration is now karma: you have got it coming for your sins.
Or your ancestors’ sins.
