What Europe’s Migration Crisis Looks Like from Italy

Italy is increasingly pushing back against Europe’s approach to illegal immigration, including a growing dispute with Germany over who should take responsibility for migrants rescued in the Mediterranean. On this week’s episode of the Center for Immigration Studies’ Parsing Immigration Policy podcast, Francesca Ronchin offers an Italian perspective on the migration pressures facing Europe and the growing frustration with uncontrolled flows.

Ronchin, a journalist with RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, Italy’s national public broadcaster, focuses on immigration in Europe. She explains the Italian government's view that when German NGOs rescue migrants in the Mediterranean, Germany should take responsibility for them, rather than bringing them to Italy and subsequently asking Italy to take them back.

Among the topics discussed:

• Italy and Germany: The dispute over Mediterranean rescues, asylum responsibility, and whether NGO rescue operations create an incentive for additional migration.
• Ceuta and weaponized migration: The large-scale arrival in Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta at the end of July, including the role of social media and traffickers and the view that Morocco used migration as a political tool.
• Immigration and Italy’s demographics: Whether immigration can solve Italy’s exceptionally low birth rate and what large-scale immigration means for wages, employment, taxes, and the welfare state.
• Integration and assimilation: The challenges of absorbing large numbers of newcomers and the difficulty of discussing assimilation openly in Italy.
• The migration route from Africa to Europe: Ronchin’s documentary, La Grande Bugia – Eritrea Andata e Ritorno (The Great Lie – Eritrea There and Back), which examines migration from northeastern Africa and questions surrounding claims of Eritrean nationality and asylum. An English-language version is forthcoming.

Host

Mark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Guest

Francesca Ronchin is a journalist with RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana.

Links

Francesca Ronchin's X Account“

La Grande Bugia – Eritrea Andata e Ritorno” (“The Great Lie – Eritrea There and Back”)

Francesca Ronchin's author page at LaVerita

Intro Montage

Voices in the opening montage:

• Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.
• Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.
• President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.
• Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.
• Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.
• Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.
• Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.
• Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.
• Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.
• Candidate Trump in 2015 campaign speech.
• Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".