You chose: marcello saija

  • In Italy we must change our thinking about immigration and see it as an opportunity and not as a burden. For this vision to work, we need to begin social planning along the lines of the American model during the Great Migration—to create many carefully organized and operated Ellis Islands along the contested southern shores of Europe.
  • Ellis Island was an organizational apparatus that implemented a specific project of social engineering aimed at building a new America. Lampedusa is nothing like that. It is merely a place where the Italian government admits migrants without any ultimate aim. Can we change things?
  • In the late Nineties, then Italy’s U.N. Ambassador Paolo Fulci—a Sicilian who calls Salina home—united 32 small, insular states to block a Security Council reform that would have marginalized Italy. Influential members of the Italian-American community were mobilized in support of Italy’s national interests. Prominent among them were descendants of Aeolian immigrants... Interview