Sikh Immigrants Seek Stabilty, Success in Italy's Parmesan Region

Donald Trump
(Image: guardian.co.uk)

The zeitgeist against useful immigration policies reached its most absurd, bigoted level this month when Donald Trump denounced Mexican "rapists." His shameless fear mongering, part of Trump's clown act, provides red meat for right-wing Americans for whom xenophobia translates into a thoughtful foreign policy direction.

Alas, Trump is not alone in an increasingly global concern over immigration. Since the end of World War II, Western Europe has experienced social unease as its population began to include "guests" from Africa and Asia. Recently, that concern has spread, as a wave of Eastern Europeans and Balkan nationalities prefer the hardships of existence in Germany or Italy to the known desperation of life in their respective homelands. Of course, the tragic North African exodus to Mediterranean countries is a major Italian political and social issue. Italian crime fiction writers, such as Massimo Carlotto and Andrea Camilleri, frequently and effectively weave these immigration phenomena into their works. The consciousness and impact of immigration is a live wire issue, although most Americans think it is contained to the United States and to Donald Trump's racist nightmare scenarios.

Sikh working on northern Italian dairy farm
(Image: bbc.com)

With all the social, legal, and criminal issues swirling around these new arrivals to Europe, it was heartening to read a BBC feature on an immigration success story. The unlikely heroes are Sikhs who emigrated to northern Italy's agricultural heartland. They found that the flat, fertile area that's home to Parmesan cheese production was similar to their native Punjab. Given their own rural backgrounds, the Sikh immigrants were quite comfortable working with the Italian region's milk-producing cows. They also did not have to be fluent in Italian to work with the bovines. And the long hours of farm life did not bother the Sikhs at all.

The Sikh immigrants, according to the BBC story, have played a significant role in resuscitating a once-threatened Parmesan production culture. They live in harmony with their neighbors, their bilingual children are proudly Italian and Sikh, and the productive, wealth-generating livestock remain in skilled hands.

Americans have long believed, or at least paid lip service, to the virtues of a sensible immigration policy. For Western Europeans, this perspective is something of an acquired taste, as their societies were not built on immigration. (Italy is somewhat exceptional in this regard, because of the mass migration of unemployed southern Italians to the more prosperous north.) The massive flow of humanity around the globe is one of the 21st Century's immediate issues. How it is handled will be part of this decade's political narrative. Hopefully, the Sikh success story will be one path toward the resolution of population migration in our time.