Bloomberg News (and the IHT) Losing Faith in the United States

Letter sent to the IHT after their publication of “Sicilians losing faith in United States“, by A. Craig Copetas of Bloomberg News on September 4, 2007

To: “Letters IHT”
Subject: A more down-to-earth explanation to Sicilians’ changing attitudes towards America (“Letter from Europe”, IHT, Sep 4)

Dear Editors

May I dare suggest a more down-to-earth explanation to Sicilians’ changing attitudes towards America? (“Letter from Europe”, IHT, Sep 4)

The Italians emigrating to the USA in the late XIX and early XX century were escaping poverty and political and social repression. Present-day Sicilians are definitely not poor, and there is very little in terms of repression.

What is the point of emigrating when one can get-by perfectly well at home?

All of this has little to do with America’s supposed fearfulness for outsiders. And in fact, Mexico and Canada aside, the nations that provided the highest number of immigrants to the U.S. compared to their population’s size in the period 2001-2005, included much of Eastern Europe, VietNam, the Philippines, and most of South America apart from Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

All in all I was particularly unimpressed by what looks like a piece of prefabricated commentary…