Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is boasting of reducing illegal immigration by as much as 64 percent. However, her government is glossing over the fact illegal immigration massively increased during her first year in office and that fellow populist Matteo Salvini reduced arrivals much more drastically as part of a previous government.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani boasted of reducing illegal arrivals over the weekend, stating, but added, “We are not against legal immigration, rather against illegal immigration.”
Meloni took power as part of a right-wing coalition government in October 2022, with her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party at the forefront and Tajani’s center-right Forza Italia and Salvini’s League (Lega) in junior positions. According to statistics from the United Nations, there were 105,131 illegal arrivals to Italy by sea in 2022, with the influx increasing to 157,651 in 2023, Meloni’s first full year in office.
SALVINI.
While the 64 percent decrease is significant, it is nowhere near as large as the decrease achieved by Salvini as Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister—roughly equivalent to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary—in a coalition with the left-populist Five Star Movement (M5S).
When Salvini took over the Interior Ministry in June of 2018, the number of migrant arrivals for the prior year stood at 119,369. By the end of the year, they had fallen to 23,370, and in 2019, they stood at just 11,471. To put this in perspective, there were more illegal arrivals under Meloni in August 2023 than in all of 2018 or 2019.
The “Salvini Method” was also credited with significantly lower migrant deaths at sea, with 754 reported either dead or missing in 2019 compared to 1,908 in 2023.
Salvini’s role in Meloni’s government is more junior than in the M5S-Lega government, and she has kept him out of the Interior Ministry portfolio.