State of immigration emergency in Italy: what is it about and how much does it affect Latin Americans?

The images of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe, each of them risking their lives, have become the most irrefutable proof of a drama that has no solution. In Italythe far-right government of Giorgia Meloni decided this week to face the situation by declaring a state of immigration emergency for six months, a measure that has caused controversy and doubts in the Old Continent.

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The Italian authorities have reported that 28,285 migrants arrived in the country in the first quarter of 2023, which means four times more than the 6,938 in the same period of the previous year.

The Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” notes that, in total, in 2022, around 105,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy via the central Mediterranean route, including more than 13,300 unaccompanied foreign minors. Instead, more than 8,000 people are estimated to have entered the country via the northeast border, mostly from conflict zones in the Middle East and South Asia.

Added to these figures are the more than 170,000 Ukrainian refugees who arrived in Italy from February 2022 fleeing the war, including some 92,000 women and some 50,000 girls, boys and adolescents.

The path is dramatic, dangerous and often deadly. From 2014 to today, 55,000 migrants have died or disappeared around the world. The Mediterranean Sea route is by far the most dangerous in the world, as it concentrates more than half of the deaths and disappearances, says a report by the specialized NGO Openpolis.

Thousands of migrants have died or disappeared at sea. (Photo: AFP)

Of the 1,000 migrants who died or disappeared in the first three months of this year, 499 were registered in the Mediterranean Sea. Among them, also the 99 people who shipwrecked a few meters from the Cutro beach, in Calabria, on February 26, in a case that went around the world.

The vast majority of migrants entering Italy come from the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Guinea and Tunisia. Regularly, they come from the same exit points encouraged by human smuggling networks.

What does the state of immigration emergency mean?

The Meloni government decreed a state of national immigration emergency after the arrival of more than 3,000 migrants in the last three days through the Mediterranean routes, while dozens of new boats, many of them in distress, continue to head to the country in full improvement in weather conditions.

The measure was proposed by the Minister of Civil Protection and Maritime Policies, Nello Musumeci, and has initial financing of five million euros. It will be implemented throughout the national territory to be able to approve urgent laws that will promote the expulsion of migrants without the need for them to go through Parliament. This regulation will be in force, in principle, for the next six months throughout the country.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. (Photo: AFP) (FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/)

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a press conference on November 22, 2022 in Rome to present her government’s draft budget for 2023. (Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP) (FILIPPO MONTEFORTE /)

The ordinance will also facilitate the reinforcement and opening of new CPRs (Centro di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio, in Italian), the structures set up for the repatriation of migrants who do not have the right to stay in Italy.

The critical situation is evident in the Lampedusa reception center, the small Sicilian island that receives the largest number of migrants due to its proximity to the North African coast. There are about 1,200 people in that place, despite the fact that it has a capacity for about 400. Many migrants are already making transfers to other locations.

Faced with this situation, Italy has also asked the European Union for “financial assistance to address the increases in arrivals by sea” and in particular the “critical situation” in points such as Lampedusa.

Meloni’s government, like others before it, has demanded, largely unsuccessfully, more solidarity from other European bloc countries, which often renege on their promises to accept asylum seekers.

The measure attracted attention and unleashed criticism and questioning in the Old Continent. The European Commission said on Wednesday that it “took note” of the declaration of a state of emergency in Italy, although it stressed that the measure is a “national competence”. “We will have to see the measures in detail before commenting on them,” said the community spokesperson for the Interior, Anitta Hipper.

Óscar Camps, founder of the Open Arms sea rescue NGO, affirmed that the state of national migration emergency in Italy is “a nightmare” that is not justified by the arrivals of migrants on its shores, but that it is “a propaganda campaign” of the far-right government of Meloni.

“It is a propaganda campaign by the Meloni government to generate alarm and noise and it is not justified (…) The Meloni government makes xenophobia an instrument of political propaganda and uses migration as a form of propaganda to avoid talking about other issues that Italy is suffering”, Camps told the efe news agency.

He assures that the increase in the structures set up for the repatriation of migrants who cannot remain in Italy “will enhance identification and deportation activities.”

Does it affect Latin Americans?

The state of emergency is aimed at containing the migration that arrives mainly through the routes of the Mediterranean Sea, which mostly come from the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Guinea and Tunisia.

Rescuers handle a body bag at a shipwreck site south of Crotone, after a migrant boat capsizes off the Calabria region of southern Italy on February 26, 2023. (Photo by STRINGER / ANSA / AFP) (STRINGER /)

So far in 2023, the largest number of immigrants arriving in that area is from the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Bangladesh, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

In fact, most of the ships that reach the Italian coasts come from Tunisia, one of the key nations for connecting North Africa with the coasts of Sicily and Lampedusa, whose reception centers are overflowing.

Government and UN reports on the subject do not mention Latin Americans among those affected by this measure. It is estimated that some 500,000 Latin Americans legally reside in Italy.

“La Reppublica” points out that in recent years the protection of the rights of migrants in the European Union has worsened, which has adopted agreements that have not solved the problem,

“Europe turns a blind eye to the violence perpetrated at its borders. These are agreements that have the explicit objective of detaining hundreds of thousands of people at the borders of Europe, delegating the deprivation of rights and the exercise of violence to authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments, such as those of Libya and Turkey. In short, when they do not die, many migrants are forced to suffer arbitrary imprisonment, violence and abuse. Conditions that, in addition, push people to flee and later find, on occasions, a tragic death”, says the medium.

Source: Elcomercio