Giorgia Meloni, denounced as the most right-wing politician to become Prime Minister of Italy since Benito Mussolini by the corporate media, appears to have fully sold out her populist, national conservative credentials, declaring that “Europe and Italy need immigration.”
Speaking at a conference with the notional aim of curbing immigration, she adopted the establishment position that the best way to stop dangerous sea voyages to Europe is to provide migrants with safer, legal routes to Europe – managing mass migration, or at least attempting to, rather than stopping it.
“Europe and Italy need immigration,” she insisted.
While this is treated as conventional wisdom, supporting evidence is scare. Britain, for example, has increased mass immigration to unprecedented levels, but is still falling behind low-immigration countries like Poland economically, while struggling with high rates of unemployment and poor integration among its ethnic minorities.
Meloni, who campaigned on a platform of robust border controls – she said she would go so far as to impose a naval blockade to stop ships from ferrying migrants to Italy from North Africa – had disappointed many supporters by allowing illegal immigration to get worse.
Moreover, she has agreed to massively expand legal immigration from 2023 to 2025 by issuing close to half a million visas to non-Europeans, compared to just 30,850 in 2019.
Much of her focus has instead been on sucking up to Joe Biden and the NATO establishment by adopting a strident anti-Russian stance, and pushing for the European Union to admit Ukraine on an accelerated timetable.
