People just want to live!

Cabrini (Italian/English, 2024)

Director: Alejandro Gómez Monteverde

After their exposè of transborder abduction of minors to satisfy the sexual needs of the deviant in 'Sound of Freedom' and hitting a runaway success at the box office, Angel Studio tries their hand at distributing a film that tries to highlight the bad treatment of early Italian immigrants at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century to the USA.

The expansion of white Americans southward and westward opened the door to an influx of economic immigrants from Europe. The potato famine sent the Irish there, and abject poverty brought Italians and Jews to escape persecution. There was plenty of menial work to be done that the locals found too dirty, dangerous and demeaning to do. Immigrants filled the gap willingly. The Americans were not welcoming of them, however. Shoving them to the most unflattering part of New York, infested with rats, crime and disease, they had to live like rats. Healthcare was poor, social amenities were dismal, pimping was rampant and in short, there was general lawlessness.

Against this background, a troublemaker Roman Catholic nun was sent to care for the poor Italian migrants in New York. The nun, Frances Maria Cabrini, and her sisters arrive in New York and find themselves in the dirty streets of Point Five. Amidst the non-cooperation of the Diocese and the Mayor, Cabrini, with her fighting spirit, despite her failing health due to past TB, starts an orphanage. The powers that be were not so excited that a woman could do so much and for, in their eyes, vermins of society. She got eviction notices and fines from the city council.

Through the help of the press, she acquired donations to purchase a piece of property, which she turned into an orphanage. She and her team soon set up a private hospital to earn money to subside the poor immigrants. Her chain of hospitals grew and had many branches worldwide.

There is a lesson for us all to learn. Recently, many videos have emerged on social media of self-appointed vigilantès who pounce on foreigners in Malaysia who set up shops, ride around without valid driving licences, or extend their premises illegally. These foreigners comprise refugees with UNHCR cards, foreign workers who overstayed their visas, and runaway workers.

Vigilantes showing foreign businesses

In the video, the vloggers quickly pass disparaging remarks about their living conditions and choice of food. In the vigilantes' eyes, the guest workers should be subservient to the locals, not independent, earning lots of money, perhaps more than the locals. The vloggers would feel unhappy that the guests bring their cultures and practices into the country, akin to polluting the Malaysian culture (sic.)

The vloggers should hear themselves speak. It sounds so ridiculous. A person in the prime of his (or her) youth is bound to have surmount of plans for his future. He would want to be a notch higher than his parents, maybe two. The desire of the human mind has no boundaries. Wealth is often used as the yardstick of success. If one does not seek wealth in his youth, when else? If his living conditions in his country are not conducive, the only logical thing to do, as generations before us did, is to migrate, looking for safer and greener pastures. The immigrants are there to do work that the locals feel is beneath them, which is demeaning and a side effect of the prospering society.

Aren't we all, the citizens of the world, all migrants, anyway? From the first hominid who walked out of the Savanah for food, we are all emigres. Some flee from famine, others for opportunities, and to escape persecution, we move. The world is for everyone. Borders are artificial demarcations, not cast in stone but in our minds.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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