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By Root 625 0

began leading his followers in setting up rows of chairs, filling much of the available space as quickly as possible. One of the others, a frequent critic of the immigrants' presence despite himself being married to one Hof very different geographical origins) and the employer of several illegal immigrants from eastern Europe in his construction business, started placing chairs in front of the main door of the Ukrainian door and only desisted when another, less virulently anti-immigrant member remonstrated with him that local people should show respect if they wished the immigrants to do the same.

While some officers perhaps wished to take more drastic action, they were constrained by laws that also gave them a moral alibi for confining themselves to generic intimidation and maintaining their preferred pose of lofty importance. It also allowed them to accuse the government, sometimes quite explicitly, of failure to do its duty by passing more effective legislation. As a cynical restaurateur of left-wing views tartly observed: "The police has every interest in making the maladministration visible." If seriously irritated, officers can sometimes briefly demand that even someone who intervenes on the immigrants' behalf must accompany them to their station for further interrogation; but such tactics tend to backfire, being unproductive of anything more than further counter-harassment from legally astute local leftists who resent the officers' high-handedness. And there is a further, paradoxical dimension. Police and immigrants alike prefer the latter to remain undocumented. As an astute young political observer remarked: "Staying illegal [actually] confers impunity!" Non mettersi in regola da l'impunita!) Once registered with the appropriate authorities, an immigrant is subject to far more numerous and ramified forms of bureaucratic control, all of which-Italians would certainly agree-are best avoided. And immigrants briefly apprehended without documents can easily give the authorities the slip, since they are not usually taken into immediate custody. Under existing laws, when an immigrant caught red-handed in the act of committing a theft did not have the proper papers, the police could not hold the offender for more than two or three days. On release, the immigrant would sign a declaration of identity and domicile and would be ordered to leave the country within fifteen days; when, at the end of that period, they went to check on the immigrant's departure, it would usually transpire that the address had been a false one. The police expected as much; as with the denuncia, the whole charade allowed the police to avoid any kind of punitive action at all. Indeed, the deportation order is often served in English, apparently on the basis of the argument that foreigners should not be addressed in Italian, but this again provides both sides with an excuse for its complete ineffectiveness. Remarked my source for this illuminating detail, "Excuses are a fine thing!"

Locals were divided in their attitudes to the immigrants. A surprising number of known leftists were hostile, arguing that the immigrants had crowded out the locals in a pedestrianized social space-the main squarethat they had worked hard to reclaim from its casual use as a parking area. When children used the Ukrainian church door as a soccer goal, their parents not only allowed them to do so but seemed at times to encourage them. This was disingenuously hostile, inasmuch as some years earlier, when it was only local lads who played soccer in the square, they were often chased away by those who had their business operations there. A few locals defended the immigrants' right to use the square in their own way, although even among these voices for tolerance some expressed concern that the immigrants were insensitive to local cultural values; and almost all were worried about the visible drunkenness of the morose men who hung around the square for hours at a time. Many Monti residents claimed that the immigrants included a high proportion of prostitutes, pimps, and drug