Viva Italia!
Thursday, 13 April 2006
According to ABC Online (that’s Australian Broadcasting Corporation to the Americans out there):
Two Melbourne men have been elected to the Italian Parliament.
It is the first time Italians living overseas have been allowed to vote and stand for election.
Nino Randazzo, who will represent Italians in Oceania and Africa in the Senate, says he is honoured to have won the seat for the centre-left party.
That’s fantastic! Although governments have been encouraging free trade and skilled migration to suit business interests, they’ve been slow to meet the needs of a globally mobile citizenry. As an American in Australia, I could vote (with difficulty), but didn’t have any representation. Likewise, Anitra needs to jump through extra hoops to vote here, and doesn’t have any representation in Australia.
A conservative estimate by the Bureau of Consular Affairs says that there were almost four million Americans living overseas in 1999; others say there are as many as nine million. That means that there are somewhere between six and fifteen missing members of the U.S. House of Representatives; although those people can vote, and are forced to pay taxes, they don’t have any representation.