Salvini, Lampedusa and immigration
In Brussels they begin to understand that Lampedusa is no longer an island: is it the first territory in Europe? Federico Guiglia's notebook
In the last three years, landings in Italy have almost tripled in the period from 1 January to 4 August: from 14,832 in 2020 to 42,464 in the current year, source Ministry of the Interior.
They are incontrovertible data, yet they lend themselves to an opposite interpretation: the inability to contain arrivals, and therefore the risk of insecurity. Or the possibility of governing a phenomenon in strong, but not alarming growth for a population of 60 million Italians, and therefore the strategy of management with common sense.
Between one and the other, between fear and foresight, it is certain that immigration is already part of the electoral campaign. Even symbolically, as witnessed by Matteo Salvini's trip to Lampedusa, where the reception and identification center for immigrants is in constant difficulty, and the leader of the League took refuge in the amarcord: "With me at the Viminale there were fewer dead and fewer landings, fewer crimes and fewer problems ”. The former minister dreams of returning to deal with the issue and entrusting the management of immigration to "a Son or a Bertolaso", that is, to a commissioner.
Giorgia Meloni, the most accredited candidate of the center-right at Palazzo Chigi, also re-launches the idea of a "naval blockade with a European mission" to stop the boats from Libya and asks to distinguish the right of the refugee "from those who are illegal immigrants". When asked about the issue, Prime Minister Mario Draghi also did not hold back: "I believe that the government has worked well on migrants".
Different points of view on an issue that war, pandemic and the recovery plan had deleted from the political agenda, but which, regardless of the already electoral approach of Salvini Lampedusa, all parties would do well to indicate how to deal with their programs.
If the data of the landings lend themselves to opposing interpretations, there can be no division on the duty to recall the whole European Union to the human drama that is taking place in the Mediterranean. And perhaps compared to the years of cynical indifference and of Italy left alone, there are now encouraging and supportive signs. The "Brussels wall" is crumbling. From those parts they begin to understand that Lampedusa is no longer an island: it is the first territory in Europe. Nor can there be a distinction between the politics of rigor and compassion. Control and acceptance are not mutually exclusive, but they are two sides to the same coin.
(Published in The Arena of Verona and Bresciaoggi)
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/salvini-lampedusa-e-limmigrazione/ on Sun, 07 Aug 2022 07:04:31 +0000.