Italy and America: Shared Fight with Illegal Immigration

Italy has struggled with mass migration, much of it composed of fraudulent “asylum seekers” from Africa. The key route of entry is from Africa by boat, with the island of Lampedusa close to the African mainland as the primary landing point. This tiny island, less than 8 miles square in size, has seen as many as 7,000 illegal aliens per day arrive, vastly outnumbering the 6,000 Italians who live on the island. Once on Lampedusa, they most often head to the Italian mainland where they file their dubious asylum claims.

The migrants often subsidize their welfare income with illegal street vending. The aggressiveness of the vendors is causing problems, and is a visible sign to the country’s millions of tourists that migration is out of control. One scam sees migrants throwing produce at tourists if they refuse to buy. Another is tying a “friendship bracelet” on a tourist’s wrist and then angrily demanding extortionate payment. These illegal vendors are rarely challenged by authorities, often because many Italian tourist towns are “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants.

More serious crimes are usually not far behind these annoyances and scams. In 2018, Italy was rocked by the murder of 18 year-old Pamela Mastropietro by an illegal immigrant drug dealer. The girl was raped and then dismembered before her body was stuffed into suitcases. In August 2022, a Ukrainian refugee was raped by an asylum seeker in broad daylight in the street, showing not even those fleeing warzones are safe from the impact of unvetted mass migration from elsewhere in the world on Italian society.

In 2018, Gambian “asylum seeker” Alagie Touray was detained by Italian police for planning a car-ramming terror attack. His cellphone confirmed he was a member of the terror group ISIS. Italy’s membership in the Schengen Area and weak borders cause security issues for other European nations, and in 2023, two Swedish soccer fans were murdered in Belgium by an ISIS-linked asylum seeker who first entered Europe via the Italian island of Lampedusa. In March 2024, three Palestinians with suspected links to the terrorist Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade were arrested for an alleged plot to attack Italy.

Italy has tried to stop mass immigration. In 2022, Georgia Meloni was elected on a ticket whose platform promised to do just that. One high-profile policy of the Meloni administration is Italy’s agreement with Albania. This would see migrants housed and processed outside of Italy while their claim is processed. This policy has been attacked in the courts by open-borders activists. This is despite the fact Albania is a safe country, a member of NATO, and a candidate for European Union membership.

The numbers show a daunting prospect for Italy as it seeks to stem the tide. Statistics from the European Union’s border agency FRONTEX show that 770,000 illegal aliens crossed into Italy in just seven years. World Bank statistics show that Italy’s population of refugees or asylum seekers had reached nearly 300,000 by 2022. This is up from 93,000 in 2014 and just 6,800 in 2000. Italy may be in for even more unsustainable migration, as the European Union’s new Migration and Asylum Pact has provisions that allow for migrants to be allocated between member states.

This all matters to America for several reasons. Over 15 million Americans visited Italy in 2023, and just under 18 million Americans have ancestry from Italy. Americans, regardless of their background, can see many echoes of Italy’s fight against mass immigration in the U.S. This includes the almost routine abuse of asylum and refugee law, particularly immigration parole, by economic migrants. It also includes the worrying trends in immigrant crime and the fact that Americans and Italians alike are often up against open borders “sanctuary jurisdictions” that complicate law enforcement and border security.

While both Italy and America face challenges, the trends globally are shifting in favor of proper border security. The U.S. government would do well to learn from its Italian counterpart. The Meloni cabinet is trying to do something to stem the tide, in spite of facing many challenges and obstacles. Sadly, the Biden administration appears to prefer to allow its own migrant crisis to continue.