Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is being accused of failing to deliver on her campaign promise to crack down on illegal boat migrants arriving on Italian shores. Despite making the country’s immigration crisis a cornerstone of her “blood and soil” campaign, Meloni has taken little action to address the problem while in office—and now more than 100,000 migrants have made it into Italy in the last year alone.
When Giorgia Meloni first launched her bid for office in 2022, traditional conservative values and the preservation of the Italian homeland were the foundation of her platform. As an outspoken populist and leader of the nationalistic Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) Party, Meloni condemned LGBTQ ideologies, abortion, COVID lockdowns, and globalist governments. A video of a 2019 speech at the World Congress of Families recirculated during her campaign, further highlighting her defense of the nuclear family.
She also proposed a controversial naval blockade in the Mediterranean to stem the flow of illegal migrants and asylum-seekers out of North Africa, a recurring problem in many European countries for decades.
Following her victory in October 2022, she became Italy’s first female Prime Minister—and media outlets around the world quickly labeled her a “threat to democracy” and “the most ultra-nationalist premier since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.”
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Meloni’s critics have been quick to seize on the right-wing government’s inability to address the crisis, calling out the obvious gap between the Prime Minister’s hardline rhetoric and her internationalist policies. “For years, Meloni and [League Party leader Matteo] Salvini taunted us every summer for the number of migrant arrivals,” said left-wing former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. “Now that arrivals have doubled, they try to divert attention and pretend not to see.”
Similar criticism was echoed by other left-wing political leaders as well as regional officials bearing the brunt of the immigration crisis in their territories.
According to a report from the country’s interior ministry, a total of 101,386 migrants made it to mainland Italy and its surrounding islands between January 1 and August 16—more than double the number from 2022 and triple that of 2021. That number is only expected to grow, potentially surpassing the record 180,000 migrants that arrived in 2016.
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