Peter, I read your solutions to the problem of "illegal immigrantion." With all due respect, I don't think you understand the nature of immigration, legal or not. People don't choose to uproot themselves from their environments simply to take roots in another country. It's the naked necessity to survive that gets people on the move. It's the solution to a necessity. A necessity centred around two simple and yet difficult needs to satisfy: working and eating. These two necessities leave no choices. Necessity is having one choice. It's survival at the most basic level. If you're hungry you eat. If you're thirsty you drink. If you're cold you take cover. Well if you have no work and can't feed your kids you seek. And when you seek you go and seek everywhere. Necessity, makes borders, bureaucratic rules, laws, regulations, deserts, seas, and distances mere obstacles to surmount by any means possible. The United States built a wall from the Pacific to the Atlantic to seal out Mexicans. This wall is equipped with the most sophisticated, high-tech, detection gadgets you can't even imagine and the Mexicans still get in. Not as many as when the American economy boomed, but they still get in, and in spite of the wall or whatever obstacle is put before them. Millions of Mexicans are in the U.S. illegally. Millions more have been legalized. Thousands are caught and repatriated, only to be caught again and again on American soil. No one really knows how many are never detected. So much for walls or whatever else they come up with to stem the tide. Castelli and other Lega members are dreaming of the day when machine gun nests are allowed at the border. He and his friends think that will work. I don't remember who said it, but he said to hang on to our illusions because we all need them to survive. Castelli's illusion is to kill as many illegal immigrants as possible so that he will live. Nice man, nice people. In any event Peter, I don't believe your solutions will work.

Try reading my blog: www.pfieldman.blogspot.com and find my report: "A Moral Path to Recovery"(Oct 09) which was sent to every western political leader as well as my articles on how to resolve the problem of illegal immigration from outside Europe or see my comments at the Guardian newspaper

Truer words were never spoken, Beppe. But what's the solution? Naval blockades? Walls? Repatriations? Those remedies slow down the tide, but won't stop it. Even if jailing clandestines were legal, there aren't enough jails to hold them in. The reality is that poverty everywhere is growing by leaps and bounds. Poor people are forcerd to rush national borders, making borders irrelevant, artificial and scaring locals out of their wits, spawning xenophobic movements and political parties. The solution is as simple as it is difficult to implement: share the wealth of the World. It's possible if people would recognize each other's humanity instead of placing so much importance on traditions, cultures, religions, skin color, nationalism, language and sense of superiority toward the "other." As long as we are not able to go beyond those issues, forget about social peace. Meantime, the "desperate people of the world" will continue dreaming about our nearest supermarket and figure out a way to get there. Need is a powerful enabler and millions are in need. Living with them doesn't have to be as it is: less fear, less arrogant politicians, no racist media and more acceptance solves the problem. Again, I'm afraid it won't happen, it's too much like sailing against the wind.

About them Italians in London Town, who (I'm kidding) "stooped" so low as to do "Pakistany work," I think I know why not even a gun pointed to their heads will get them back to Italy. It's got to do with taking any job and not being looked down on for it.

By the way, don't feel bad if you missed out on Harry and Kate's wedding. Blair and Brown missed out also. They weren't chivalrous or noble enough to be knighted, Knights of the Garter: an exclusive blue-blooded club founded in the year 1300 or thereabouts.