Meloni Must Stop The Boats

For someone who campaigned and was largely elected on the basis of putting an end to the illegal arrival of migrant boats on Italian shores, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has performed dismally for the past twelve months. So far in 2023, 134, 578 migrants — twice as many as last year — have arrived on Italian soil. It’s the highest number since 2016. A sizable portion comes from Africa but others hail from nations as far flung as Pakistan and Bangladesh. An alarming one in every three illegal migrants is neatly popped into the we-have-no-idea-who-they-are-and-where-they’re-from category.

The small Italian island of Lampedusa, whose population is normally about 6,000, is overwhelmed. Its migrant holding center, built to house 400 migrants, has had to accommodate the thousands of individuals arriving regularly via people smuggling vessels from mainly the North African countries of Libya and Tunisia. Last month, a total of 7,000 people arrived in a single 48-hour period. In April, the Italian government declared a six-month state of emergency in response to the sharp rise in migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea. (READ MORE: Italy Rejects Transgenderism and Upholds Female Beauty) 

Various factors are at play. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard agency, has pointed to particularly favorable weather conditions in the Central Mediterranean, contrasting it, for example, with harsh weather in the Western Mediterranean where arrivals in January were down by 50 percent compared with the previous year.

Political instability in places like Tunisia also plays a role. Earlier this year, Tunisian President Kais Saied was branded one of those great replacement theory “alt-righters” when he warned of a “criminal plan” to inundate Tunisia with “hordes of illegal migrants” from sub-Saharan Africa who were committing “violence, crime, and unspeakable acts,” and to fundamentally transform the Islamic Arab demographic.

There’s also a clear “pull factor.” Earlier this week Elon Musk amplified a report that German government-aided NGOs are collecting illegal migrants in the Med and escorting them to Italian territory. Musk’s comments swiftly earned him a barrage of self-righteous condemnation from supercilious German officials.

But Musk is right. There’s a world of difference between rendering assistance to persons in distress at sea, an obligation under international maritime law, and essentially operating a shuttle service for human traffickers. Indeed, Meloni recently wrote a private letter to German chancellor Olaf Scholz, expressing astonishment at Berlin’s alleged decision to substantially fund two NGOs “engaged in the reception of irregular migrants on Italian territory and in rescues in the Mediterranean Sea.” 

The real issue is whether Meloni, whose right-wing coalition enjoys a clear majority in both houses of parliament, has the gumption to finally do something about it. In her address to the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations last month, she urged the UN to “wage a global war without mercy against traffickers of human beings.” (READ MORE: Italy’s Battle Over Birth Certificates Is a War on Surrogacy)

Yet “blocco navale” hashtags won’t break human trafficking business models; nor will bigger detention centers, billion dollar bribes to foreign regimes to police their own borders, resource development plans for Africa, and hand-wringing memoranda of understanding that blame, in part, the “climate change” bogeyman and regional grain wars. Even Meloni’s proposed resurrection of the European Union’s three-phase Operation Sophia, launched in 2015 to halt human trafficking from North Africa to southern Europe after a shipwreck left over 800 migrants dead, would hinge on Italy’s ability to stop the boats at their North African ports of departure and therefore obtain approval from the coastal state affected. 

Short of yielding to Italy’s historical trend of being invaded, conquered, and occupied by sundry foreign invaders, Meloni has one option: She must find a legal way to turn back the boats from Italian waters and, as former Interior Minister and head of the right-wing Lega Nord political party Matteo Salvini proved possible, prevent them from docking in Italian ports.

In 2001, the Australian government under then Prime Minister John Howard showed how it’s done when he devised the original “stop the boats” policy in response to a surge in unauthorized maritime arrivals. Between 1999 and 2001, an average of about one boat a week arrived illegally on Australian shores, typically from Indonesia but bringing thousands of migrants from across Asia and the Middle East. Within twelve months of the implementation of Howard’s “Pacific Solution,” a comprehensive legislative and border control package designed to end people smuggling in Australian waters, the number of boat arrivals dropped to one. 

Intuiting that he had the support of Australian voters, Howard introduced legislation that excised Australian islands from the migration zone, authorized the Royal Australian Navy and Customs and Border Protection officials to, quite literally, escort unauthorized vessels back to Indonesian waters, and established — not without ongoing controversy — offshore mandatory detention and asylum processing centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. 

In 2008, when the left-wing Labor government came into office, Howard’s policies were reversed and the number of illegal boat arrivals and deaths at sea soared for the next five years. In 2013, 20,587 illegal migrants arrived on 300 boats. That September — ten years ago last month — Tony Abbott, who had served under Howard, was elected Prime Minister with a clear mandate to “stop the boats.” No sooner was he sworn into office, than Abbott launched Operation Sovereign Borders, a “zero-tolerance,” unified command structure under the direct management of three star general and current Chief of the Defense Force, Angus Campbell, to oversee border security across Australia and the region. By 2014, boat arrivals had plummeted to one, and in subsequent years fell to zero. Over the next four years, a total of 33 boats with 810 passengers were turned around by Australian officials. Surprise, surprise! Abbott’s policy of stopping the boats, contrary to the naysayers in both government and the media, worked.

Australia’s example under Howard and later Abbott showcases the most effective and humanitarian way of dealing with illegal boat arrivals, and the key to dismantling the multibillion-dollar human trafficking industry. When Abbott was advised by senior officials that the turning back of boats might be illegal under international law, his response was to “seek better advice.” As he recently explained, “a country that can’t stop people entering without permission is suffering a form of peaceful invasion.”(READ MORE: Meloni Pushes to Outlaw Italian Participation in Global Surrogacy Industry) 

Similarly, the only way for Meloni to resolve the present human trafficking crisis is — Berlin, Brussels, and the unscrupulous NGOs and migration cartels be hanged — from the position of defending Italy’s territorial sovereignty. She must insist on her government’s right to determine who, when, how many, and under what circumstances people will enter Italy. In fact, European Union Member States retain primary responsibility for the management of their respective sections of the external borders. Without this stipulation, not only is a Member State’s own sovereignty undermined, but the entire premise of the Schengen Convention, which created a single area of movement within the EU without internal border checks, becomes ridiculous.

In a 2019 address to the Danube Institute in Budapest, Abbott put it this way: “the key to controlling your border … is declaring that you have the right to do so.” It’s only at this point that sensible measures can be adopted. The challenge therefore lies not in complaining to Germany, hashing out ten-point plans with the EU Commission, or haggling with Tunisia. It’s in summoning the political will to prioritize and protect the interests of Italian citizens and the economic and social interests of the nation, which is crippled by chronic youth unemployment and skyrocketing energy costs in its industrial regions. This first step is by far the most grueling. But it’s one Meloni must take if she is to stop her government from devolving into yet another neutered, globalist joke. 

Carina Benton is a dual citizen of Australia and Italy and a permanent resident of the United States. A recent West Coast émigré, she is now helping to repopulate the country’s interior. She holds a master’s degree in education and has taught languages, literature, and writing for many years in Catholic and Christian as well as secular institutions. She is a contributor to the Federalist, a practicing Catholic, and the mother of two young children.

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