#ITALIANSFIRST - Help them in their own homeland

The argument

This strand of Italy's 2018 immigration debate began from a claim about domestic conditions rather than about migrants. Italy was still facing the consequences of the 2007 economic crisis, and many Italians were living in bad conditions. On that premise, proponents argued, it is hard to help both Italians and immigrants: the resources available for assistance were already insufficient for the citizens who needed them. The reasoning treated the state's obligations as ordered rather than equal. There were no more jobs for Italians themselves, and a government unable to take care of its own population could not, on this account, undertake to take care of others too. The claim was not that migrants deserved nothing but that the capacity to provide it did not exist, and that a state attempting to meet both demands would fail at both. Hence the framing that gave the position its slogan: Italians first. What distinguished this argument from simple refusal was the alternative it proposed. Rather than spending in Italy on people who had arrived, the Italian government should invest money in the development of African countries, so that people would not need to run away from their homeland in the first place. The proposal located the problem upstream, in the conditions producing departure, and held that money spent there would do more good per euro than money spent on reception in Italy — while also reducing the future arrivals the domestic argument treated as unaffordable. So the position presented itself as addressing both concerns at once: protecting a domestic population under strain, and helping migrants where help was said to be most effective. Its critics read it as a justification for closing ports, but as advanced in the 2018 debate the claim was that assistance should be relocated rather than withdrawn.

Context

This hashtag was part of the Northern League's political campaign. At the beginning, this slogan was used to support anti-immigration policies that didn't accept any kind of immigrant. Over the years its supporters softened their position. Nowadays, they say that Italy can't make it alone and that the government should stop welcoming people. Some say that refugees are the only one who should be allowed in, some others say that even refugees should not seek for help in Italy.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is a European asset for refugees. It doesn’t cover all the expenses, but all the recent governments have wasted a huge amount of money in other projects. There is also a problem with tax evasion and corruption. There would be money, if only the government decided to take action against these issues. The idea of investing money in Africa is good - but if it's not done well, it could turn into a collaboration with governments that will just imprison refugees in countries like Libia, which is often being accused of several human right violations in refugee's camps.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Economic difficulty is real without establishing the resource constraint the argument needs. European funds are available for reception, and the domestic shortfall has other well-documented sources — tax evasion and misdirected public spending among them. [Rejecting P2] The zero-sum framing is assumed rather than shown. Reception costs are a small fraction of public spending, and the working-age arrivals the premise counts purely as a burden also contribute through work and taxation over time. [Rejecting P3] Development assistance is a reasonable long-term aim and not a substitute for obligations now. Its effects are measured in decades, it does not address people fleeing war or persecution rather than poverty, and delivered badly it has meant funding governments that detain migrants in conditions that have drawn serious human rights findings. [Rejecting C] 'Rather than' is where the argument fails. Development spending and asylum obligations are not alternatives — the second is a legal duty owed to people already arriving, which the first does nothing to discharge.