On 15 August, Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano said a time limit must be put on the humanitarian search-and-rescue operation that has saved some 63,000 migrants since last year. The previous weekend alone, more than 2,000 people came ashore in southern Italian ports, under the auspices of the country's Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) operation.
According to interior ministry figures, 116,944 migrants arrived by sea in Italy in the 12 months to 31 July, of whom 62,982 were rescued in Operation Mare Nostrum.
“With regard to immigration, Italy has once again shown itself to be a world champion in hospitality,” Alfano told a press conference in Rome. But he added that if the European Union and its border management agency did not take over the operation, “the Italian government will have to take decisions on the matter”.
The previous government, headed by Enrico Letta, launched Mare Nostrum following the biggest single disaster in the recent history of irregular migration in the Mediterranean. Last October, 368 people – most of them Eritreans – died after a fire on board their boat within sight of land off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Alfano, leader of the New Centre-Right (NCD) – the junior partner in the present coalition government – said the operation should not be allowed to reach its second anniversary. It was the latest indication of tension in Matteo Renzi’s left-right coalition on the issue of immigration in just a few days.
But two days later the Commission replied to Alfano that its Frontex does not have the means or funds to substitute Mare Nostrum. The Commission, a spokesman said, is doing all it can to help Italy but without more help from the 28 EU member states, Italy will have to face the emergency on its own.
The reaction from Italy was predictably harsh but what can Italy do to persuade the other member states? Italy, with all its financial problems, cannot continue to sustain an operation that costs €300,000 a day, €9.5 million a month. On the other hand, this operation cannot be cancelled from one day to the next. During the course of the operation, 539 people traffickers have been arrested, and 53,000 refugees are accommodated in the camps or centres all over Italy.
That’s already a slip of the tongue (or the pen) tackled by some elementary maths: 117,000 came in a year, but only 53,000 are in the centres. And that’s not considering those who arrived before last year.
To understand what is going on, the followig are excerpts from a report in the Daily Mail, written by Sue Reid, which appeared in those same days.
“Walking out of a Paris station this week, the exhausted Eritrean migrant in threadbare blue jumper raised his eyes in wonderment at his first sight of the French capital.
“To his delight, Yonas Mugis had reached northern Europe in double-quick time: a mere seven days after being rescued by the Italian navy, along with 100 other African migrants crammed into a small boat that had sailed out from Libya and nearly sank in the Mediterranean.
“On Tuesday afternoon, at a café opposite the magnificent Gare de Lyon, the 36-year-old told me with relief: ‘I am on my way to Britain now. It is my first choice of country to live in. If it’s too difficult to get across the Channel at Calais, I will go further north to Sweden or Norway.’
“Mugis thinks he’s lucky to have made it so far so quickly. Yet I discovered this week that he’s far from exceptional: thousands like him are heading for Britain just days after landing in Italy from Africa.
“In an exodus of epic proportions, they move relentlessly up through Europe – and no one it seems can, or is even inclined, to stop them.
“Encouraged by a border-free Europe and a desperate desire for a better life, 95,000 migrants have arrived in Italy this year, and another 5,000 will be here by the end of the month. Under European Union rules, migrants are meant to stay in the first country they reach in Europe. Instead, they walk out of Italy’s holding camps and slip across the porous Italian-French border on the chic Riviera while police from both countries turn a blind eye.
“I was told by the French police that 2,500 migrants cross from the Italian town of Ventimiglia to the pretty seaside resort of Menton, a few miles into France, each week.
“Most take the train; others pay traffickers €50 to be driven by car, and the rest walk in broad daylight along the coast road, where the abandoned border control hut still stands.
“The thriving migrant route leads to Nice, the Cote d’Azur’s main city, with its regular buses and trains to Paris. From there, it is less than three hours or so by train to the ferry port of Calais, where they can try to cross the English Channel to Britain.
“If they are unsuccessful, they might head for Germany or Scandinavia.
“As more migrants arrive from sub-Saharan Africa, as well as countries torn apart by the Arab Spring, Italy says it is struggling to cope with the numbers. France, of course, says the same when they reach there. Both have asked the EU for urgent help with the mounting crisis.
“Yet the truth – as I found this week – is that migrants are often waved through both these countries by police and border officials in what appears to be a blatant attempt to get rid of the problem.
“At Ventimiglia, Italian police smoked and chatted while they ignored scores of migrants buying rail tickets to cross into France.
“One officer admitted when I approached him: ‘We can’t arrest them because they haven’t committed any crime.
‘They don’t want to be here. They want to go to England or Germany, Sweden or Norway. You would need 50 police on duty 24 hours a day to stop them going. And then what?
‘Our town of Ventimiglia has a population of 20,000. If we stopped them, we would have a population of 100,000 here. It would be chaos.’
“Once the trains arrive in Menton, it is the French police’s job to go on board, make a search, haul off the migrants and take them by bus back over the border to Italy – in line with EU rules. Yet they easily escape detection by locking themselves in lavatories, or simply sitting in the upstairs double-decker compartments which the police have no time to search before the train pulls out of the town again.
“I watched the migrants emerge laughing with relief at not being caught. One Syrian, 32-year-old Adad, shook me by the hand. ‘They don’t see me,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I am going to Nice, to Paris, and then I will go to your country.’
“In fact, Adad, sitting among ordinary passengers, had no need to hide. Neatly dressed and with a pale skin, he could easily have been an Italian on a business trip. The three policemen making a half-hearted search did not even glance at him.
“An officer organising the searches in Menton said: ‘Officially, we send them back. But unofficially we let them go because there are too many and they are not intending to stay in France. They are also human beings, and there has to be compassion.’
“I tracked the migrants on to Nice, where they bought tickets to Paris. Again, there was no need for them to hide. Dozens sat on the main platform right outside the office of France’s Police Nationale (responsible for sending the migrants back to Italy) while they waited for a fast TGV train to the French capital.
“Occasionally, the police emerged to check tickets – and ordered some to come with them to the ‘police office for papers’.
“The bewildered Africans emerged a few minutes later, each clutching a document containing rules for illegal migrants travelling through the EU. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Yonas when I first met him at Nice station. ‘Will it mean I am stopped from getting on the train to Paris?’
“Of course not. The Nice police seemed just as relaxed to see the migrants get on a train as those in Menton and Ventimiglia. The document itself, ‘Return Of A Foreigner To A Country Party To The Schengen Agreement’, seemed strict enough. It said that Yonas should report back to Italy, where he first entered Europe. It warned that he had entered France illegally without a valid residence permit or way of supporting himself.
“Yet minutes after he was handed the paperwork, the police stood aside and watched him board the 7.34 train to Paris. It had all been a ludicrous charade. In the two mornings I was at Nice station, all the migrants with tickets were allowed to leave for the French capital.
“(I have seen on Italian TV footage of migrants arriving in a camp and promptly walking out of the back door and nobody ever sees them again) Some camps even offers a bus-shuttle service three times a day to deliver them to the nearby coach station.
“Under EU rules, they are meant to be fingerprinted on arrival to prove that Italy is where they first arrived in Europe. It then becomes the only country where they can claim asylum – a device to stop migrants disappearing while it is decided if they should be deported.
“However, after protests from migrants citing their human rights, fingerprinting has been abandoned at some camps.
“The migrants I met say they don’t want to stay in Italy or France. They are attracted by the generosity of the British welfare state, particularly free healthcare, education and housing.
“In Italy, there is free healthcare without a qualifying period for migrants, but housing handouts or cash help do not exist.
“France only gives free healthcare to those residents with a card proving they have paid taxes. And it is tough on housing benefit, granting it only to migrants who win asylum. But only 17 per cent are successful in gaining asylum in France, compared with 38 per cent in the UK.
“Once in Britain, the majority of asylum seekers do not have the right to work and rely totally on state handouts. Housing is provided, but they cannot choose where it is. A single person is paid a cash sum through the Post Office of £52 a week, families far more.
“In Paris this week, Yonas Mugis from totalitarian Eritrea, where brave souls who question the regime are routinely tortured or executed without trial, put it simply: ‘For 10 years, I have been planning to escape from Africa.
‘If you were born in my country, then you would understand why we want to come to Europe.’”
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