Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is in crisis after thousands of illegal immigrants take over the small island of Lampedusa in just 24 hours. Immigration facilities on the island were overrun by illegal boat migrants attempting to reach the mainland. The island, which has a population of less than 6,000 people, saw 6,800 migrants land on its shores over a 24-hour period, overwhelming the local community as Italy’s immigration crisis continues unabated.
All across Europe, an illegal immigration crisis threatens to topple already overburdened government systems in countries like Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Refugees and economic migrants—most of them military-aged males from countries not actively at war—routinely make dangerous and illegal crossings into Europe, where they are met with largely unguarded borders, enormous government entitlement programs, and sometimes even free housing.
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The island of Lampedusa, which sits halfway between Tunisia and the larger Italian island of Sicily, has become a prime stopping point for immigrants fleeing from Africa to Europe. According to Italy’s Interior Ministry, an estimated 124,000 migrants have reached Italian shores by boat in the last year, double the number seen last year.
According to the Red Cross, 4,200 of the 6,800 immigrants who landed on Lampedusa on Thursday in a flotilla of 120 barely-seaworthy boats are still awaiting transport to the mainland. Transfers are ongoing, but resources at the refugee center established to handle this crisis are being stretched thin. The official capacity for the facility is 400 people.
Francesca Basile of the Italian Red Cross stated that people are “being continuously transferred” off the island as food and camping beds are distributed.
However, as the center overflowed, large groups of migrants began to squabble over food and bottles of water and some slipped away into nearby communities by climbing the walls of the compound. Reports of theft and assault soon began to circulate as the almost entirely male crowd made their presence known.
As the crisis across Italy worsens by the day, extensive criticism has been brought against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for failing to deliver on her campaign trail promise to address the problem. As Valuetainment previously reported, when 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. At the time, she proposed a controversial naval blockade in the Mediterranean to stem the flow of illegal migrants and asylum-seekers out of North Africa.
But once in office, Meloni has made almost no effort to even acknowledge the crisis, falling far short of the “ultra-right-wing threat to Democracy” that her critics accused her of being.
Italy’s record for arrivals by sea was set in 2016 when 181,400 people made their way into Italian territory. It is expected that, if migration continues unrestricted, 2023 will surpass that record within the coming months.
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