Italy is facing numbers of illegal immigrant arrivals not seen since the height of the migrant crisis and now, several leftist mayors are joining calls for stricter measures on illegal immigration after migrants were redistributed to their areas.
Mayors belonging to the leftist Italian Democratic Party (PD) are now critical of illegal immigration as the Italian government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has begun redistributing migrants to their cities and towns, the newspaper Il Giornale reports.
Giancarlo Muzzarelli, the PD mayor of Modena, highlighted violence and crime attributed to migrants saying,
We cannot look the other way compared to a reality that in recent times, despite the commitment of the police, has seen an increase in aggression and violence while on the territory the transfers of migrants have tripled, without an adequate reception network.
Violent crimes committed by illegal migrants, from murders to sexual attacks, have been a significant problem in Italy for several years, with a 2019 report claiming that nearly half of the victims of rapes in the country were committed by migrants, while another report from the year prior stated that one in three crimes in general were perpetrated by foreigners.
Earlier this month, a Nigerian migrant was arrested for the brutal murder of a woman in Rovereto in Trento whom he allegedly also attempted to rape. The woman was beaten so severely that she died of her injuries after being admitted to a local hospital.
The incident caused tensions within the Meloni government, with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini demanding clarification as to why the Nigerian, who was living on the streets, was in Italy at all, seemingly challenging Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
Another PD mayor, Matteo Biffoni of Prato, complained that Prime Minister Meloni had previously promised to stop the illegal boat landings saying,
The Meloni government had promised to stop landings, now it has created the case, and the Ministry of the Interior does not respond, does not give adequate information neither to the mayors nor to the prefects, no one knows the distribution criteria or what will happen in the coming months.
The criticism of Meloni comes after months of high numbers of illegal migrant landings since her right-wing coalition government came to power in October of last year.
Before becoming Italian premier, Meloni made a number of policy proposals to stop the flow of illegal boat arrivals, including a call for a possible naval blockade of the Mediterranean Sea, an idea that was backed by Italian Rear Admiral Nicola De Felice. In November of last year, the admiral said,
Targeted action to tackle the root causes of illegal immigration is absolutely necessary. The solution may be the implementation of the so-called ‘naval blockade’, understood not as a war-style blockade but a naval interdiction intervention, aimed at blocking the departures of boats linked to human trafficking.
Had it been implemented from the beginning, the ‘naval blockade’ would have prevented the deaths of thousands and thousands of people, including many children.
Deaths in the Mediterranean Sea are already reaching high numbers this year according to statistics from the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, which estimated that as of August 15th, at least 2,175 migrants were either dead or missing, a massive increase from the same period last year which saw 1,368 missing or dead.
The sheer number of illegal migrant arrivals in Italy has also increased to such an extent that the European Union border agency Frontex now notes that over half of all the illegal entries into the European Union come from the Central Mediterranean route.
“The increase was entirely driven by the number of arrivals through the Central Mediterranean, which remains the main migratory route into the EU and accounts for more than half of all detections at EU borders. The number of irregular crossings on this route more than doubled (+115%),” the agency said in its August report.
The complaints from the Italian leftist mayors echo those from American leftist politicians after illegal migrants were redistributed to their areas. In one case last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent illegals to the enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, causing great consternation among the liberal elites living on the island off the American east coast.
