Socialists urge immigrants to travel home and vote

MILAN, Italy, March 31 – The head of the main opposition Socialist Party, Edi Rama, made a visit last weekend to nearby Italy where he met with Albanian immigrants and called on them to travel to Albania to cast their ballot in the forthcoming June 23 parliamentary polls.
Rama has made also similar trips to neighboring Greece, where there are about one million Albanian immigrants. Italy is the second country with most Albanian immigrants, about half a million.
Rama tried to urge immigrants in Milan to think of giving their contribution in the change of the governing in their homeland. He said that though immigrants make up about one-fourth of the country’s population they cannot vote while abroad. He also hailed their contribution in the country’s economy.
Immigrants’ money have long been making up some 13-14 percent of the country’s GDP but they have recently fallen to much lower levels, some 7-8 percent, due to the ongoing financial crisis in at least these two countries.
Rama said that Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the governing Democrats had done nothing to deal with such an issue despite continuous efforts from the opposition.
Rama said they had also offered the possibilities to make possible the vote of the immigrants in the countries where they live.
The opposition leader accused his political opponent that he had never negotiated on the immigrants’ situation in their resident countries, like Italy or neighboring Greece, though he has had many contacts and negotiated many other deals with the neighbors, including, what he called, “donation” of some 300 square kilometers of Albanian waters to Greece. He referred to the demarcation of the sea border line that was signed for years ago with Athens ahead of the elections and was later turned down by the country’s constitutional court.
But it doesn’t seem that the governing Democrats have forgotten about immigrants. The local media reports that the Democrats are offering free flight tickets for all immigrants wanting to come and cast their ballot in June 23. Though such a fact has not been confirmed by the Democrats, the media refers to different immigrants, or students in Italy saying they are being urged to come and offered a return ticket.