ITALIAN REFUGEE FLOW, BUT WHERE IS THE EU???

Italy is now getting more than half of the EU’s entire refugee flow probably well over 100,000 this year and all of those people must stay in Italy. It’s expensive, it’s politically poisonous, and the country’s facilities for looking after these refugees are being overwhelmed. Yet Italy’s’s EU partners seem quite content to leave Italy to bear the burden all by itself.

With almost all of the Fertile Crescent now in a state of war, and new flows of refugees starting as a result of the fighting in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the numbers are going up fast.

Mare Nostrum is name of the operation Italian navy is running to save asylum seekers from drowning on the dangerous voyage in open boats from North Africa to Italy with Five Italian warships dedicated full-time for the Operation. On many occasions in the past few months they have picked up more than 1,000 people in one day. The Italian Rescue Operation began in October 2013, and since then over 80,000 people have been pulled from these sea-going death traps (though most were not actually sinking at the time) and safely landed in Italy. This situation cannot last.

But Rome is losing patience with its do-nothing EU “partners”, and there is another way to address Italy’s problem.

So in theory, if Italy just gives the asylum seekers an ID card and a document saying they have permanent residence, then they’ll leave for greener pastures.

“We’ll just let them go,” said Interior Minister Angelino Alfano last May. “We want to clearly say to the EU that they either patrol the Mediterranean border with us or we will send all those who ask for asylum in Italy where they really want to go: that is, the rest of Europe, because they don't want to stay in Italy.”

In a leaky, massively overcrowded wreck that was scavenged somewhere along the North African coast by the people smugglers and sent off to Italy after a few rudimentary repairs, it can be a death sentence.

An estimated 20,000 people went down with their boats before reaching Italy in the past 10 years.

This policy honours Italy’s humanitarian traditions but since all the people who are saved claim political asylum on coming ashore, setting in motion a legal process that can last for years, the Italian navy is actually increasing Italy’s problem as the first port of call for over half the undocumented immigrants entering the European Union.

Most of them have a good case for claiming asylum: a large majority of the people reaching Italy are refugees from war and tyranny in Syria, Eritrea, and Somalia, with smaller number from various West African countries. Nor do they really want to stay in Italy, which is going through a prolonged economic crisis and has very high unemployment. They would rather move on to more prosperous EU countries further north.

But international law says that refugees must claim asylum in the first safe haven they reach, and in the case of the EU that is almost bound to be Italy, because it is so near to Africa and because the post-Gaddafi chaos in Libya means that there is no control over boats leaving the Libyan coast.