I Know What Prejudice Feels Like. That's Why I Cannot Be Racist.

Whenever immigration is discussed, the debate almost always collapses into two opposing camps. On one side are those who treat every immigrant as a threat. On the other are those who label any call for controlled immigration or any criticism of migration policies as racism.

I belong to neither camp.

There is a simple reason why.

I come from Southern Italy. I was born and raised near Naples, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, in a region that has spent more than a century living under the weight of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

Anti-Southern prejudice is not a myth. It has deep historical roots. Following the unification of Italy in 1861, pseudo-scientific theories promoted by Cesare Lombroso portrayed Southern Italians as biologically predisposed to crime and social backwardness. Modern science has long since discredited those ideas, but many of the stereotypes survived.

Cesare Lombroso  (1835 - 1909)

For generations, Southern Italians encountered apartment advertisements stating "No Southerners," faced discrimination in the workplace, and were routinely portrayed as lazy, corrupt, dependent on welfare, or inherently linked to organized crime.

When people are judged not by their character but by where they come from, that is prejudice.

Having grown up with this history, I cannot accept racism directed at immigrants.

A person's skin color says nothing about their worth. Their ethnicity does not determine their character. Every individual deserves to be judged by their actions, not by the group to which they belong.

Rejecting racism, however, does not require abandoning common sense.

Immigration presents real challenges that every democratic society must confront honestly. Many people leave their countries in search of safety, opportunity, or simply a better future. That aspiration is entirely understandable.

But successful immigration policy cannot stop at admitting people across a border.

Integration matters.

Anyone who chooses to settle in another country should have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to learn the language, respect the law, understand the country's constitutional principles, and embrace the basic rules that make peaceful coexistence possible.

Integration is a two-way process. It requires commitment from newcomers, but it also requires governments willing to invest in language education, civic integration, and equal opportunities rather than leaving people isolated on the margins of society.

It is also important to recognize that migrants arrive from countries with very different institutional, political, and social realities. Some come from states weakened by corruption, fragile institutions, authoritarian rule, violent conflict, or deeply rooted patronage systems. These differences can make integration more complex, but they do not define the moral worth of individuals. Every person should be judged on their own conduct, not on the country listed in their passport.

There is another uncomfortable truth that deserves attention.

Too often immigration is reduced to a simplistic battle between compassion and hostility. Meanwhile, far less attention is paid to the criminal networks that profit from human trafficking, the exploitation of vulnerable migrants, or the economic interests that sometimes develop around poorly managed reception systems.

The greatest victims of these failures are often the migrants themselves.

For this reason, I reject both extremes.

I reject racism because I know what prejudice feels like.

I also reject the idea that responsible immigration policies are incompatible with respect for human dignity.

A democratic society has both the right and the responsibility to regulate migration, enforce its laws, and build effective pathways toward integration.

Human dignity and secure borders are not mutually exclusive.

Compassion and responsibility are not enemies.

A society that truly believes in equality must be capable of defending both.

Who Imports the Third World Eventually Becomes the Third World

The sentence is deliberately provocative:

"Who imports the Third World eventually becomes the Third World."

Taken literally, it is an oversimplification. Yet, beneath its rhetorical force lies a question that deserves serious consideration: to what extent can a civilization absorb large-scale migration without being transformed by it?

History suggests that every civilization is shaped not only by its territory or institutions but also by the values, customs, expectations and civic habits of those who compose it.

Migration, therefore, is never merely a movement of people. It is also the movement of cultures, legal traditions, social norms and religious identities.

This is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It is simply a historical fact.

The Roman Empire offers one of the most frequently cited examples. Modern historians generally agree that Rome did not fall because of a single invasion or a single migration. Economic decline, political instability, military overextension, demographic changes and internal fragmentation all contributed to its collapse. Yet the gradual settlement of Germanic peoples within the Empire became one element of a much broader process in which Rome progressively lost its capacity to integrate newcomers into a common civic identity.

The lesson is not that migration inevitably destroys civilizations. Rather, civilizations decline when they lose the confidence, institutions and cultural cohesion necessary to integrate change on their own terms.

More recently, historians such as Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations rarely disappear because of external enemies alone. They weaken first from within, when their ruling classes cease to respond creatively to new challenges. Samuel Huntington, although controversial, warned that cultural identities would become increasingly significant in the post-Cold War world. Economist Paul Collier has likewise argued that immigration can generate enormous benefits when it occurs at a pace compatible with successful integration, but it may also create social tensions if numbers exceed a society's capacity to absorb newcomers.

Europe now faces precisely this dilemma.

The continent needs workers because of demographic ageing and declining birth rates. At the same time, several European countries struggle to integrate large migrant communities. In some urban areas, educational disadvantage, unemployment, parallel social structures and residential segregation remain persistent challenges. Security authorities also continue to monitor the threat posed by violent Islamist radicalisation, while making clear that only a small minority of Muslims embraces extremist ideologies.

None of these observations justifies hostility toward immigrants as individuals. Millions contribute positively to European societies through work, entrepreneurship, scientific research and public service.

Nevertheless, neither compassion nor good intentions can substitute for effective public policy.

Successful immigration requires functioning borders, respect for the rule of law, shared civic values, language acquisition, access to employment and a reciprocal willingness to integrate. Without these conditions, immigration risks becoming not a source of renewal but a source of fragmentation.

This debate should therefore be separated from conspiracy theories such as the alleged "Kalergi Plan." Whether such theories are true or false changes little about the demographic, economic and cultural transformations that Europe is experiencing today. Those transformations are measurable and deserve to be discussed rationally rather than emotionally.

Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi

The future remains open.

Europe may demonstrate that liberal democracies possess the strength to integrate newcomers while preserving their constitutional principles and cultural identity.

Or it may discover that societies unable to transmit their own civic culture gradually cease to remain the societies they once were.

History offers no guarantees.

It merely reminds us that every civilization is ultimately shaped less by the people who arrive than by the confidence—or the uncertainty—with which it responds to their arrival.