I would like to comment as well.



First by saying that I find all posts:

Geraldine's, Paul's, Susan's, and Mairead's extremely interesting. What I 
like in Mairead's and Susan's posts is the accepted opening to a society in 
which multi-ethnics is the base of human endeavors. I grew up in New York, I 
maybe have an experience which is the other way round of Mairead's, and got 
to these tiny villages and spaces where everybody knows everybody /ah how 
suffocating at the beginning_ and I had to learn their humor, and to 
conform, and dress in the same way, and act as I was supposed to.



I have to say beforehand that I never submitted for any funds when several 
people told me to try to get them, seen my activity as an artist or a 
writer. But this is a notion that does not belong to my _American_ sphere, 
which is my most intrinsic one, thus thank you Mairead for making things 
clear to me at a personal level.



Besides this, when I talked of funds I was directly speaking through a 
person I value, and that is a guy who runs a second-hand shop where I bought 
all the furniture I have in my apartment now. He is German, has four kids, 
and moves pieces of furniture after his regular ten hours at the shop. We 
have to go back to his grandparents and parents, when Mussolini opened the 
steelworks and invited the Italian population to come and live here, by 
giving them free lodgings and a lot of possibilities. His parents were asked 
instead to "opt" which means that if they wanted to go to German schools, 
speak their language and keep their traditions, they had to leave everything 
and go to Austria, otherwise even their surnames were translated into 
Italian and they had to speak only Italian. The province _South Tyrol_ since 
then has prospered, and now has all kinds of privileges when compared to the 
other Italian provinces, and the German ethnic group is by now well settled. 
There were plenty of problems along the way_ not too dissimilar from Ireland 
in its political development.



Now we have another wave. And this time from the Middle East. Local people 
are quite well off and they need someone to do the dirty job. Thus these 
new-comers have good privileges, lodgings and grants and what-have-you. What 
this guy was complaining about was that he had to pay for every single penny 
for his home, he is still sweating - and I know it, and running around as a 
mad to pay the high taxes we all have to face to give privileges to someone 
else.



The question, as it was previously highlighted, risks to set the poor 
against the poor, as usual. I think Europe is a couple of centuries behind 
in facing racial problems when compared with the States. Only because up to 
now, exception made for London, Paris, Berlin, there were no foreign groups 
entering the local population. Decisions are taken above, on paper and at a 
desk without looking at the actual needs of the people.



Let's take our poor guy with a family and his business. He knows he should 
be financially supported because he needs and deserves it. But the Law does 
not contemplate a person who has been a resident for several years in this 
place. Only the new-comers can be helped.

And this case seems similar to the one Geraldine is bringing forth. These 
are people who starved in the past and now are killed by taxes because the 
industrial machine needs new hands.



I hope I made things clear from this side of the world. My best to you all, 
and keep up the great work.



Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing 
star!
Friedrich Nietzsche