Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Montreal (Agenzia Fides) - After spending time in Belgium, I am on my way to Canada. In my investigation into immigration or better, into the movement of peoples from one continent to another, I am confronted with a phenomenon which used to involve humble people, with humble baggage, in search of new lands, new hopes, better fortune, and most of all a little serenity so scarce in the homeland. This was how endless millions of Europeans made their way to the Americas and to Oceania. Driven by poverty and desperation, whole lands moved to other parts of the world. At first they sailed away on the bridges of steamships, with a “suitcase tied with string ”, unable to speak a word of the new language, hoping only to stay together in the difficulties they would face. They moved by the million, but they moved freely. They were not slaves. But is this so today ? No! Not at all.
The deeper I probe into this trail of new emigration, the more obvious the criminal plan behind it: to exploit the desperation and poverty of millions of individuals. The mass of poor people anxious to reach rich nations follows routes well mapped out and controlled by criminal organisations. Today, more than immigration, we should speak of human trafficking, or more explicitly, a new form of slavery. The title I have chosen for this enquiry is “The bag tied with string”.
Why this title “The bag tied with string.”? Baggage tied with string, immediately brings to mind millions of Italian, Irish, Polish, Spanish or Portuguese emigrants who moved, bags on backs, from the beginning of the 1800s to the 1950s, from one continent to another, fleeing famine and poverty. Those men, women, adolescents, many illiterate, with doggedness, sacrifice and willpower, were the bricks used to build the wealth of the West. Masses of them. Millions, today integrated, sons and daughters of cardboard baggage. Today very difficult to distinguish from those who arrived in the same land just a century earlier fleeing poverty or persecution, if not deported with force.
And today? No baggage. Nothing. Millions of shadows slipping across mountains and coasts, seeking a dream. A dream of escaping from hunger, escaping from death hiding behind the smile of a boy bomber or woman bomber, who wants to kill you and with you, more innocent people. Shadows slipping over coastlines. Shadows without bags, no room for bags in a boat. Shadows without bags, better for crossing mountain passes and precipices. Shadows; the heavy ones are left to drown, or fall into crevices. Shadows leave no traces on the paths and routes of the human traffickers.
They are the bags tied with string: their bodies, or better, their shadows. Crime rules. Desperation accepts. Pre-payment. Flesh, bones and blood, from now on, are no longer yours. Once the price is fixed, you belong to the “Agency”. Nothing is yours anymore, not even your dreams or your hopes. The bag is your shadow. The string, tight around your neck, stops you from breathing. String of criminals, blackmailers, pitiless usurers, if not fanatics of terror. You pay and you obey. You want to go? You must be a shadow! My bag? You are the bag! Give money! Much money! A debt as great as the sweetest and greatest dreams of any man. Give money! Much money! And you man-woman bag, can carry your dream, just one dream in your heart! Because the greater your dream, the more reality will be different. Of course! Dreams are costly. But the “Agency” lends you money for your dream. Blessed “Agency”. Cursed be my dream which keeps me, illegal immigrant, in chains. A Shadow forced into prostitution, a shadow of a man slave, a shadow of a woman slave. Ten, twelve hours, with the obedient body curved in a place where it is forbidden even to dream. What I left behind, what I fled, is only a memory. Lands of bloodshed and nothing else. And here nothing again, only the strong survive.
I'll tell you my dream. The past and the present are in the one room where I have to climb over others like me to find a place in which to fall asleep close to sort of toilet, a wash-basin, a boiling-ring and a gas canister. A smelly, damp room, which offers no certainty for the desperation of my sleep. When I think of the distance, I ask myself: “How did I come this far?” . When I was there I said: “I don't know”. I don't know how, but I do know that he or she made it: they made it, they reached your land where you can buy and sell happiness, and where there is no war or hunger.
Blessed “Agency” which lends me money to cross mountains and seas. And so I tumbled into the trap of the engineers of criminal finances, wholesale drug peddlers, merchants of prostitutes, traffickers of death, some even in the name of some religion. Terror. Abuse. Slavery. The rich world fears shadows and so spends 25 to 30 thousand billion dollars a year on border control and migratory and asylum policies. Billions which could create jobs there, where there is no work and here, where workers are so needed. My flight has landed. I will find “ bags tied with string” here in this country too. I walk down the gangway I have no illusion that reality here will be no different. From the friends expecting me I have already heard tales just as tragic as those I heard in Europe (from Canada, Luca De Mata) (16 - to be continued) (Agenzia Fides 17/3/2009; righe 64, parole 1024)
