YOU DON’T EMIGRATE TO EXPORT UNDERDEVELOPMENT

People do not normally leave their country because they are perfectly happy with it.

They leave because they want to work. To earn more. To give their children a better future. To live in a safer, more prosperous society. They leave because they believe that somewhere else they will find opportunities that were unavailable to them at home.

That is the whole point of emigration.

You leave in search of something better.

You do not leave in order to recreate the conditions you were trying to escape.

Yet this rather obvious point has become strangely controversial.

Immigration is not simply the movement of human beings from one geographical location to another. People do not arrive as blank slates. They bring languages, customs, social habits, moral assumptions, ideas about family, authority, religion, work, property, individual responsibility and the law.

Culture travels with people.

To deny this is not tolerance. It is intellectual laziness.

If a country remains poor, unstable or chronically underdeveloped, we should be willing to ask an uncomfortable question: why?

Geography matters. History matters. Colonialism can matter. International politics matters. But none of these explanations is sufficient on its own.

A society also has what might be called an operating system.

It consists of its institutions, its habits, its unwritten rules and, above all, the assumptions people make about how society is supposed to work.

What does an individual owe to the community?

What does the community owe to the individual?

Is the law something to be obeyed—or something to be negotiated?

Does personal loyalty matter more than an impersonal institution?

Is advancement earned through competence and hard work, or through family connections and patronage?

Is individual responsibility a virtue, or is every failure someone else's fault?

These are not trivial cultural details.

They shape institutions.

And institutions shape societies.

This is where the intellectual tradition associated with becomes relevant. Behind institutions there is culture. Behind culture there is a particular view of the human person and of society.

Before you can understand the political structure of a society, you have to understand the mentality that produced it.

And mentality does not emerge from nowhere.

Religion has historically been one of its most powerful sources.

That does not mean that a particular religion mechanically produces either prosperity or poverty. Human societies are far too complicated for such childish formulas.

It means something much simpler—and much harder to deny.

Ideas matter.

Religious traditions have helped shape attitudes towards authority, family, gender, law, community, individual responsibility and the relationship between the individual and the collective. They have helped define what people consider sacred, legitimate, obligatory or forbidden.

A worldview is not decorative folklore.

It is part of the machinery of society.

Which brings us to integration.

Integration cannot mean that the host society provides everything while demanding nothing in return.

It cannot mean housing, welfare, education, healthcare and legal protection on one side, with no corresponding expectation of learning the language, obeying the law, respecting institutions and accepting the basic social norms of the country one has chosen to enter.

Integration works both ways.

And there is nothing remotely radical about saying so.

In fact, there is something deeply absurd about the alternative.

Imagine leaving a country because it offers little freedom, little security, little prosperity and few opportunities—then arriving in a country that has built precisely those things and demanding the right to reproduce the cultural and social patterns from which you were trying to escape.

That is not integration.

It is cultural importation.

And no successful society has an obligation to commit cultural suicide in the name of tolerance.

If you come to Europe because you recognize that Europe offers greater opportunities, then ask the obvious question:

Why does it offer those opportunities?

They did not fall from the sky.

They are the product of centuries of institutional development, legal evolution, economic growth and cultural change.

You cannot simply demand the fruits of a civilization while dismissing the historical, cultural and institutional foundations that produced them.

The immigrant who comes to work, obey the law, educate their children, build a future and become part of the society around them is not the problem.

The problem begins when immigration is treated as a one-way transaction: the host society is expected to provide, accommodate and apologise, while the newcomer is told that adaptation is somehow oppressive.

That is not integration.

That is surrender.

A confident society can welcome outsiders without apologising for its own identity.

It can be generous without being naive.

It can be tolerant without declaring every imported practice beyond criticism.

And it can say, without embarrassment, that some things are not negotiable: equality before the law, individual freedom, freedom of conscience, the rule of law, the rights of women, the protection of children and the authority of democratic institutions.

An open society can welcome people who are different.

But an open society still needs a centre.

If it becomes so terrified of asserting its own values that it refuses to distinguish between what it wants to preserve and what it does not wish to import, then it has ceased to be tolerant.

It has simply become confused.

And a civilization that has forgotten why it became prosperous should not be surprised when prosperity—and eventually cohesion—begin to disappear.

You don’t emigrate to export underdevelopment.

You emigrate to escape it.

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.