As Migration Surges, Italy Weighs Barring Some Rescue Boats

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/world/europe/italy-migrants.html

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ROME — More than 20,000 migrants have reached Italy in the last week, a sharp spike that has left the Italian government considering whether to deny landing rights to independent rescue ships not flying the Italian flag if it does not get more help from the European Union.

The number of migrants risking the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean from Libya often increases in warmer months, but this week’s surge is extraordinary even compared with the already high summer numbers of recent years.

The spike in migration has inflamed one of the most divisive debates in Italian politics, and worsened tensions between Italy and the European Union. And the role of rescue ships operated by humanitarian groups and nongovernmental organizations has now moved to the center of that debate.

Right-wing parties, which celebrated victories in Sunday’s municipal elections, have latched onto the climbing number of asylum seekers as a vote-getter. Some have argued that the center-left government is incapable of stanching the flow of migrants, while others accuse the government of having a secret plan to swell the number of immigrants with the intention of one day granting them voting rights.

Right-wing politicians and newspapers have spread a sense that the nongovernmental organizations are essentially profiteers who collude with human traffickers to aid and abet illegal immigration. “They are complicit in this mass exodus and earn from it,” said Matteo Salvini, leader of the Northern League, an anti-immigrant party that campaigned vigorously for many of the center-right candidates who won in Sunday’s election.

There is no evidence of any such collusion.

Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency in Southern Europe, said that rescue ships operated by nongovernmental organizations had rescued 12,600 people in the Mediterranean — about 35 percent of the overall number saved — in the first four months of 2017. But she said that she did not believe they drew more migrants into the water or that they played a role in the rising number of asylum seekers arriving in Italy.

Ms. Sami said that while she was aware of reports about the Italian blockade proposal, there were no reports of ships being blocked. She said she believed the Italians were trying to get Europe to show “greater solidarity with Italy.”

But the center-left government, which has championed a more welcoming approach and saved thousands from the sea, is now showing signs that its patience is wearing thin. It is treating the recent landings as something close to a national — or at least political — emergency.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Marco Minniti was briefed about the high numbers of landings at Italian ports during a stop in Ireland on his way to the United States for a meeting with American officials. The numbers were so high that Mr. Minniti — often characterized by supporters as on the tougher, more realistic, side of the center-left government — decided to turn back to Rome.

But government officials say there is little Mr. Minniti, or anyone in Italy, can do alone. The Italian news media reported this week that Italy has authorized its ambassador to the European Union, Maurizio Massari, to ask the European Commission to revise the bloc’s asylum procedures and consider the possibility of blocking boats without Italian flags from docking in Italy.

“It’s a hypothesis we are considering,” said one Italian government official with knowledge of the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. “We would block the boats that don’t fly an Italian flag from docking in our ports. It can’t just be Italy that receives all the migrants. Europe must understand that our coasts are not just our frontier but Europe’s frontier.”

Some experts doubt the legality of such a policy, and Mr. Massari did not return an email request for comment.

Mr. Salvini, the leader of the Northern League, mocked the proposal as a publicity stunt allowing the government to feign a tougher, and now more popular, posture. “We’ve been asking to block these boats for three years,” he said in an interview. “That the government is going to Brussels to ask is ridiculous because Brussels has already said they have no intention of doing it. Some things you do or you don’t. You don’t ask.”

Mr. Salvini approvingly named Hungary, Austria and France as countries that have demonstrated a willingness to turn migrants away. Other countries, such as Poland, have refused to host asylum seekers and lighten Italy’s load.

This is frustrating to the Italian government, but also to many migrants who feel stuck in Italy because European Union rules state that, while waiting for judgments on their asylum requests, they must stay in the country where they were first registered. Often that country is Italy.

In recent conversations with asylum seekers on Italy’s northern border, where migrants stood around sweltering reception centers and loitered around Lake Como, several said that they appreciated Italy for rescuing them from the sea but that they dreamed of moving to Germany or Northern Europe for work.

Italian government officials have argued that Italy is taking on too much of the burden, and last week leaders of European Union member states agreed to free up more funds to help Italy and Greece, another front-line nation, with the rising number of migrants.

Italy has also sought to stem the flow at the source of the migration.

The Italian government, like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, has advocated that Europe concentrate on development in African countries to discourage people from leaving. The European Union has even sought to train the Libyan Coast Guard and provide it with faster boats to better patrol its own coast. Migrants who are intercepted before reaching international waters can be returned there.

But it does not seem to be working.

If the current pace holds, more migrants will arrive in Italy this year than the 180,000 that the Interior Ministry recorded last year. More than 60,000 arrived in the first five months of 2017.

Ms. Sami, the United Nations spokeswoman, said the focus on nongovernmental ships was misplaced. She said more focus was needed on stopping traffickers in Africa and getting the thousands of people making the journey from Niger to Libya to stay.

Once they are in the water, she said, “the first imperative — and we don’t see any exception — is to save lives.”