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Outrage in Italy has erupted over the involvement of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the upcoming Winter Olympics, with Milan's mayor, Giuseppe Sala, condemning the agency as a "militia that kills." The current Italian government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is perceived as conservative, complicating local protests against ICE's participation. In contrast, Spain is implementing a regularization program for over 500,000 undocumented migrants, recognizing their positive economic contributions. This juxtaposition highlights differing national approaches to immigration amidst rising tensions.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations
  • Familiarity with the political landscape of Italy under Giorgia Meloni
  • Knowledge of immigration policies in Europe, particularly Spain
  • Awareness of the socio-economic impacts of migration
NEXT STEPS
  • Research the role of ICE in international events and its implications
  • Examine the political strategies of Giorgia Meloni's government regarding immigration
  • Investigate Spain's regularization program for undocumented migrants and its economic rationale
  • Analyze public sentiment and protests against immigration policies in Italy
USEFUL FOR

This discussion is beneficial for political analysts, immigration policy experts, and individuals interested in the socio-economic impacts of migration in Europe.

Borg

Borg

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No ICE wanted in Italy.
www.nbcnews.com

ICE role at the Winter Olympics prompts fury in Italy

It is not unusual for Homeland Security Investigations to work on such marquee events abroad. But the division's affiliation with ICE has sparked anger in Italy.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com

Outrage has erupted in Italy after it emerged that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit would play a role in U.S. security for the Winter Olympics next month.

Some Italian officials had already reacted with fury.

"This is a militia that kills. It is a militia that enters people’s homes by signing its own permission — it is clear that they are not welcome in Milan," the city's mayor, Giuseppe Sala, told Italian radio RTL 102.5 on Tuesday.
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Related to @Borg 's post #46, does anyone have insight into why the Italian Feds are not withdrawing the ICE participation in the Olympics? Is it as simple as it seems - concern for what Trump's response would be? I don't know anything about the leaning's of Italy's current government, but I have an idea in my head that sometimes they are pretty conservative hence my question.
 
Grinkle said:
Related to @Borg 's post #46, does anyone have insight into why the Italian Feds are not withdrawing the ICE participation in the Olympics? Is it as simple as it seems - concern for what Trump's response would be? I don't know anything about the leaning's of Italy's current government, but I have an idea in my head that sometimes they are pretty conservative hence my question.
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The current Italian government under Meloni is on the right of conservative. I am close to calling them Nazis, but that might be more due to my personal aversion. However, they are close.

I thought, too, that it would be easiest if they simply refused the Visas. On second thought, I found that primarily local politicians like the mayor of Milan, and the population were publicly protesting, but Trump's brothers in mind, the Meloni regime, not so much. And the Visa are a matter of a state-level decision. It is too early to say whether it will boil up to that level.
 
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I don't want to open a new thread for a single news message. Spain decided to follow a completely different path to manage their illegal migration. Since Spain is close to Africa, has long coastlines and a significant agricultural sector that traditionally attracts low-qualified workers, they have a migration problem, too. I read yesterday that they want to equip 500,000 illegal migrants with official papers based on an economic study that showed that those immigrants contribute in a measurable and positive way to the economic output of the country and the general age structure of society.

The Spanish government has announced it will approve an extraordinary regularization program that will benefit more than half a million foreigners already residing in the country. The measure, which is expected to be presented this Tuesday to the Council of Ministers, stipulates that those eligible will be those who can prove they were in Spain before December 31st of last year, have no criminal record, and have resided in the country for at least five months at the time of application.
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Sources:

elpais.com

La regularización de inmigrantes en España, a contracorriente de Europa

La medida se produce mientras la mayoría de los miembros de la UE endurecen sus políticas migratorias, aunque países como Italia, Grecia o Portugal han apostado por planes similares en el pasado
elpais.com elpais.com

 
fresh_42 said:
I read yesterday that they want to equip 500,000 illegal migrants with official papers based on an economic study that showed that those immigrants contribute in a measurable and positive way to the economic output of the country and the general age structure of society.
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[SACARSM]Yes, but without illegal - which is a synonym for criminal - immigrants, how is one supposed to justify carrying guns everywhere?[/SACARSM]
 
You have an alternative to the "State of the Union Address" tonight. Why would you want to hear it anyway? You can watch the "State of the Swamp" at the same time.

The "State of the Swamp" counter-address, headlined by actor Robert De Niro, is set to take place at the same time the president speaks to a joint session of Congress about the nation's affairs and his policy agenda. Invoking the frog as a symbol of opposition to Trump, the event's title references the swampy terrain of the nation's capital.
...
The "State of the Swamp" is organized by anti-Trump group Defiance.org, the "artist-activist" coalition Portland Frog Brigade and advocacy media network Courier. The event is a live counter-address "focused on defying Donald Trump's abuses of power, including officials who previously advised Trump," according to a Feb. 17 statement from organizers. ...
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In-person tickets are sold out, according to the website, but the program can be livestreamed nationwide for free via Defiance.org, YouTube, Substack and other media partners listed on the State of the Swamp website. Those who want to tune in virtually should register via the State of the Swamp website.
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Like with big tech, we can vote with our money and time. I agree, we can punish Trump friends and middle east meddlers by tanking their investment. Support independent journalists.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
Like with big tech, we can vote with our money and time. I agree, we can punish Trump friends and middle east meddlers by tanking their investment. Support independent journalists.
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It is the general current that worries me. I commented just yesterday, "control the media, control the public", and added Orban, Erdogan, and Putin as examples. I also wanted to add Berlusconi, but that's the past. I could have added more examples by deeper investigations into Poland, Slovakia, or Meloni. I also added that the USA is under review.

To lose another major news channel to propaganda should make Americans uncomfortable.
 
fresh_42 said:
To lose another major news channel to propaganda should make Americans uncomfortable.
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CNN is mostly leftist. They won't tolerate MAGA influence. I expect CNN to further decline. Maybe that is what they want. It won't convert any leftists to the MAGA movement either way.
 
Maybe they'll get access to the Pentagon again. Or maybe we'll just get to hear him call out his supporter's new cable company as fake news.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
CNN is mostly leftist.
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Agreed - I find CNN to be mostly left opinion, very little actual news and I hardly watch them because I am looking for actual news undiluted by pundit back-and-forth. One can at least hope for consumer choice in punditry, with as many choices of left as of right, and we do seem to be moving to right overall in our punditry choices. I find that concerning.

I am fortunate enough that I can afford to subscribe to SiriusXM, and my preferred news source is the Julie Mason show, 3-6pm EST daily, ch 124. She does a great job of having both D and R guests and journalists talking about the news of the day or the week - its a good balance and much of it is objectively presented, imo, at least by the journalist guests. The congresspeople guests are not objective, but she has a D for every R so it balances out that way.

en.wikipedia.org

Julie Mason - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Grinkle said:
Agreed - I find CNN to be mostly left opinion, very little actual news and I hardly watch them because I am looking for actual news undiluted by pundit back-and-forth.
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My prior reason was that I like different perspectives: how do others see what's going on? How do others comment on German subjects? However, I observed that CNN International has lost its international aspect almost completely over the past decade. It is merely all about domestic American affairs. That's certainly interesting, but neither is it 24/7 of interest nor international to me. One could literally see where they lowered costs. Reports about anything in Congress and interviews with Americans are way cheaper than those of international correspondents. EuroNews and France 24 are more international. I don't like the BBC for the same reasons I don't like CNN. It is an all-British channel, not even European. I even caught them manipulating video material.
 
I was looking for news stories that weren't paywalled and ran into this interesting site - https://globalvoices.org. I haven't read too many of the stories yet but they look like news pieces written by people around the world. It's a perspective that I haven't seen in any news source before.
 
Borg said:
I was looking for news stories that weren't paywalled and ran into this interesting site - https://globalvoices.org. I haven't read too many of the stories yet but they look like news pieces written by people around the world. It's a perspective that I haven't seen in any news source before.
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Non-profit organization in the Netherlands sounds good.
 
I noted a recent massive increase in advertisements from and about Ontario at all fronts: tourism, education, investments, and even on channels I wouldn't expect to see it.

It is fairly easy these days to distinguish Canada from what was formerly a strength of the USA, and Ontario takes its chance.
 
Grinkle said:
This is getting very little coverage from either the left or the right. I suspect any politically biased media, left or right, will be hesitant to flag centrist pragmatic policies that might de-emphasize polarizing political issues that generate a lot of interest.

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The Trump administration has made changes to the H-2A visa program that will allow more migrant workers with lower wages
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... sells better than directly reintroducing slavery.
 
fresh_42 said:
sells better than directly reintroducing slavery.
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As far as I can see, there is little or no selling going on, its just happening without much notice.

Its been my view that the free market will be the only thing that drives real immigration reform in the US. This hardly counts as reform, but it is a free-market driven reaction.

Regarding slavery, whether or not there should be a minimum wage is difficult to dis-entangle from immigration policy for me. The increase in visas is a recognition that US workers won't do this work for what farmers want to pay, so either accept food inflation or find workers willing to work for less and the administration is opting for the latter - purely free-market pragmatism as opposed to any immigration strategizing. I am strongly in favor of work-visas in principle and I think a serious comprehensive work visa program across all sectors of the US economy should be enacted to remove the incentive for illegal immigration and resolve the free-market based reasonable objections to removing people who do immigrate illegally.

In this particular very limited case, I prefer the change in policy to not changing, and at the same time I criticize the decrease in minimum wage. The people taking the Visas prefer having the work to not having it, so I don't think preventing their entry is in their best interests, but I do think its predatory to decrease the minimum wage for these people and I support the idea of repealing that part of the policy, even if that would cause food inflation. I'd rather see food inflation because workers are paid more than food inflation because there is not enough labor to harvest crops, so keep the minimum wage where it is (or in this case, restore it where it was), in my view.

Does Germany have a work-visa policy? If so, do people on work visas typically have the lowest paying / least desirable jobs similar to the farm workers in the case under discussion, or if not, what policies in Germany prevent that from being the equilibrium like it is here in the US?
 
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Grinkle said:
Does Germany have a work-visa policy? If so, do people on work visas typically have the lowest paying / least desirable jobs similar to the farm workers in the case under discussion, or if not, what policies in Germany prevent that from being the equilibrium like it is here in the US?
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Yes, but the main problem is the same: immigrants and asylum seekers. It is relatively difficult for them to get permission to work, which is also politically debated. The basic subject is comparable. Immigrants and asylum seekers are rarely EU citizens who are automatically allowed to work. On the other hand, there are roughly about 300 US citizens living in my city, so there is quite obviously a way for them to get such permission.

If you consider the workforce as an asset in capitalistic systems, you inevitably end up discussing minimum wages and where hidden slavery starts. The so-called free market never really addressed this problem: Where does exploitation start? It is an ethical question, since on the other side of that boundary lies dignity. And to my best knowledge, no country on earth has ever solved it for its prostitution segment. Cheap foreign workforce in the agricultural segment is a form of modern slavery, in my opinion, everywhere. But this is a debate of its own. Rising cucumber prices in Russia recently made headlines. It sounded somewhat funny, and I haven't dug any deeper into the reasons for this. But fair wages in the agricultural sector would certainly make our vegetables expensive.
 
That's an interesting look at Australian procedures - I wish we had a similar mechanism in the US, where any petition with enough signatures would require a congressional response, one way or the other.

Its a bit of a chuckle that in the Snopes article they mention a different petition that is actually asking to INVITE Trump and his family to Australia - it seems like a great mechanism to get people involved in politics.
 
Grinkle said:
I wish we had a similar mechanism in the US, where any petition with enough signatures would require a congressional response, one way or the other.
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We used to have that. It was shut down on the first day that Biden took office but it's not clear who shut it down. I'm actually surprised that Trump didn't shut it down after he took office the first time.
en.wikipedia.org

We the People (petitioning system) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

There was even a petition to build a Death Star as a jobs program.
In November 2012, a petition was created urging the government to create a Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 25,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response released in January 2013 noted that the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $852 quadrillion and that at current rates of steel production it would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The response also noted that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets" and questions funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition.
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I told my wife yesterday that Hegseth would overturn the crew's suspension because Kid Rock is a Trump supporter. I guarantee that wouldn't have happened for a flyover of a Democratic supporter. Army regulations and standards of behavior don't matter as long as you're supporting the regime.

www.nbcnews.com

Hegseth lifts Army crew suspension over Kid Rock flyover

Hegseth lifts Army crew suspension over Kid Rock flyover
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
Borg said:
I told my wife yesterday that Hegseth would overturn the crew's suspension because Kid Rock is a Trump supporter. I guarantee that wouldn't have happened for a flyover of a Democratic supporter. Army regulations and standards of behavior don't matter as long as you're supporting the regime.

www.nbcnews.com

Hegseth lifts Army crew suspension over Kid Rock flyover

Hegseth lifts Army crew suspension over Kid Rock flyover
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
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Hegseth really likes to undermine the cliche 'chain of command', and 'discipline' within the armed forces.
Doesn't realize the demoralization each and every act he does to active members who want respect for the service they provide - non of which comes from their top boss.
Another one that Trump will have to get rid of [ so far Noem ( justified ), Bondy ( too much for her to handle - just from the look of her she seemed conflicted and quit while ahead ), Musk ( finally came to his senses )]
Trump after Iran is over will throw Hegseth under the bus as a scapegoat- and no one will shed a tear, least of all anyone in the armed forces, who I think despise him and would like nothing better than getting out from under such a self serving performer.
 
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