II. Emigration: Its Necessity and Usefulness

Emigration is a natural, providential phenomenon. It is a safety valve given by God to our troubled society. It is a self-preserving force that is far more powerful than all the moral and material restraints devised by legislators to ensure public order and to safeguard the life and property of its citizens. We all know the proverb: “mala suadet fames” (uncontrolled hunger). Who could hold in line a nation that is convulsed by the pangs of hunger and had no hope of finding its daily bread elsewhere?

For people who see the suffering caused by emigration and blithely ask: “Why are so many people leaving?” there is a very simple answer. In almost every case, emigration is not a pleasure but an inescapable necessity. Of course, among the emigrants there are some bad individuals who are vagrant or depraved, but these are a minority. The vast majority, not to say all, of those who emigrate to far-off America do not fit that description. They are not fleeing Italy because they don’t like work but because there isn’t any work and don’t know how they and their families can make ends meet.

One day a wonderful man, an exemplary Christian, from a little mountain village where I was making my pastoral visitation, came to see me and to ask me for my blessing and a memento for himself and his family, on the eve of their departure for America.

When I demurred, he countered with this simple but distressing dilemma: “Either you steal or you emigrate. I am not allowed to steal nor do I want to, because God and the law forbid it. But in this place there is no way I can earn a living for me and my children. So what can I do? I have to emigrate: it’s the only thing left . . . .”

I didn’t know what to answer. Deeply moved, I blessed him and entrusted him to the protection of God. But once more I became convinced that emigration is a necessity, a heroic and final remedy one has to accept, just as a sick person accepts a painful operation to avoid death.

Religion and emigration are by now the only two means for saving society from a great catastrophe in the future: one by channeling surplus population toward other continents, the other by soothing and comforting the desperate, abandoned, anguishing emigrants.

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 as selfish and insensitive persons. In fact, by blocking emigration, we are violating a sacred human right, and by leaving it to itself, we are making emigration ineffectual. The first forget that human rights are inalienable and 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 that had been temporarily withdrawn from the nation.

My contention is borne out by these examples. Ancient Greece drew power and glory from its colonies spread along all the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. After the discovery and occupation of America, Spain reached the peak of its grandeur. England possesses an inexhaustible source of power and wealth in its vast dominions in India.

I would gladly have left out these preliminary observations, because 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 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 reporters and public figures. And so I came to the conclusion that my observations are not at all out of place.

More than others, the owners of lands from where peasants are emigrating in greater numbers are worried by a sudden manpower shortage that brings about decent salary increases for the remaining workers; so the owners have voiced their grievances with the Government. Through their elected representatives and associations, they have called for sanctions “to cure and limit this moral illness, this desertion, which deprives

the nation of manpower and wealth, which violates colonial agreements and leaves behind laziness and insubordination, with no gain for the emigrants, because peasants without capital and education will always and everywhere be proletarians, and the same 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 by isolation” (Parliamentary Proceedings, Session of February 22, 1879).

As anyone can guess, these reasons and proposals are motivated more by the interests of the well-to-do who stay behind then 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 natural one of our ports, as happened every time Government, out of an ill-conceived patriotic spirit, made emigration more difficult. This happened after the Lanza Circular, when clandestine emigration outnumbered free emigration and we saw emigrants leaving from foreign ports, to the great detriment of our merchant marine and of the emigrants themselves. The emigrants were compelled to do things in hiding to escape the sanctions of the authorities and thus became easier preys of greedy exploitation by emigration agents.

How much more human, more civilized, more patriotic, more befitting the ruling class, and especially how much more Christian it would have been to guide and direct and prepare these unfortunate people for the dangers awaiting them along the long and tortuous road of exile!