b) EMIGRATION IS A NATURAL RIGHT

"A sacred right"

Those who would like to put a stop or a limit to emigration for patriotic or economic reasons and those who, because of a mistaken idea of freedom, want emigration left to itself, without direction or guidance, are either not using their heads or, in my opinion, are reasoning egoistically and insensitively.  In fact, by blocking emigration, we are violating a sacred human right; and by leaving it to itself, we are making emigration ineffectual.  The former forget that human rights are inalienable, that hence a person can seek his fortune wherever he so desires.  The latter forget that emigration is a centrifugal force, which, if well directed, can also become a very powerful centripetal force.  Moreover, emigration brings relief to those who stay behind because of reduced manpower competition and new commercial outlets.  But emigration is also a great boon because it creates new spheres of influence and brings back home, in a thousand different ways, the treasures of human resources temporarily withdrawn from the nation (...).

A theoretical debate on whether emigration is good or bad is a waste of time at this point.  For my purpose, the important thing is that emigration exists.  But during the research I undertook to gather the statistical data and facts for this humble work of mine and also during my conversations with friends, I came to realize that there are a lot of fuzzy ideas in this field, not only among the middle class and among

private citizens but also among journalists and public figures.  So I came to the conclusion that my observations are not at all out of place.

More than others, the owners of lands from which peasants are emigrating in greater numbers are worried by this sudden manpower shortage, which brings about decent salary raises for the remaining workers.  So the owners have voiced their grievances with the Government.  Through their elected representatives and associations, they have called for measures "to cure and limit this moral illness, this desertion, which deprives the nation of manpower and wealth, violates agreements with farmhands and leaves behind laziness and insubordination, with no gain for the emigrants because, without capital and education, peasants will always and everywhere be proletarians.  The misery they try to escape by fleeing the country will haunt them like their own shadow, a misery made even more acute by new needs and isolation" (Parliamentary Proceedings, Session of February 22, 1869).

As anyone can easily guess, these reasons and proposals are motivated more by the interests of the well-to-do who stay behind than by the needs of the poor people who are forced to leave.  If the Government were to listen to, and let itself be guided by, these proposals, it would do something useless, unjust, and harmful.  Useless, because it will never be able to stop emigration; unjust, because every intervention that hinders the free exercise of a right is unjust and oppressive; harmful, because emigration would find an outlet other than the normal one of our ports, as happened every time the Government, out of an ill-conceived patriotic spirit, made emigration more difficult.⁵

"Emigration must be spontaneous"

If the emigration agents were, as the Hon. De Zerbi seems to think, just simple intermediaries who acted as trusted agents between the shipping companies and the emigrants and restricted their work to giving information on sailing schedules and formalities and if the agencies were just branches of the central shipping offices, there would be no problem.  Their work, though superfluous most of the time (since the interested parties could easily get this information on the street corners or at the stores), would not be harmful either.  In fact, sometimes their work might even be useful to the emigrants.  Even if the agents did a bit of coaxing to sway the hesitant by depicting to the

poor ‑- tired of their misery ‑- the fresh, peaceful brooks of America, like those that in Dante's Inferno made Master Adam go into ecstasy, it would not be the end of the world.  One could close an eye and say with Manzoni: you poor little ragamuffin, you are not the one who will destroy Milan.

But permission to make enlistments is something quite different from all this.  If the agents were doing this when it was forbidden by government regulations, imagine if they will not take advantage of it when the law will give them this right!  As a natural consequence, the catastrophes deplored in the past will increase in proportion to the freedom granted because, on the one hand, past experience is no match for people's insatiable thirst for gain; and, on the other, uninformed people either don't know the fate of those who preceded them or hope to be luckier than they.

The penalties laid down by the new law for emigration agents are severe and this is good.  They will never be too severe for those who, more vile than thieves and more vicious than murderers, push so many unfortunate people to ruin.  How many of these poor people, torn from their homes by false promises, crossed the ocean to settle in inhospitable lands, where they wrestled with a thousand insurmountable difficulties and considered themselves lucky if, at the end, they found a piece of land on which to die in peace!  How many, abandoned on desert shores without clothes and food, were lucky enough to return, with despair in their hearts, to their little native village!⁶

"Freedom of emigration, not freedom to coerce it"

I believe in freedom of emigration, not freedom to coerce it, because, while emigration is good when free, it is bad when coerced.  If spontaneous, it is good because it is one of the great laws of divine Providence ruling over the destinies of peoples and their economic and moral progress.  It is good because it is a social safety valve.  It opens up the flowery paths of hope and sometimes of riches to the poverty-stricken and civilizes people through contact with other laws

and other customs.  It brings the light of the Gospel and Christian civilization to barbarians and idolaters.  It ennobles human destiny by broadening the concept of motherland beyond the physical and political boundaries, making the whole world man's motherland.

If coerced emigration is bad because it substitutes true need with the fever of instant gain or with an ill-conceived spirit of adventure.  Instead of helping and relieving the situation, it becomes an evil and a danger because, by unnecessarily depopulating the motherland  beyond measure, it creates more uprooted and disillusioned people.  It is bad, finally, because it deviates emigration from its natural channels, which are the most effective and least harmful ones.  Experience teaches, in fact, that this kind of emigration is the cause of great evils that can and must be prevented by a provident civil government.⁷