Italy's Salvini puts focus on migration ahead of Sept. vote

4/8/2022 18:40

        Italy's former firebrand interior minister, Matteo Salvini, is campaigning to get his old job back with a stop Thursday on Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa, the gateway for tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Italy each year across the perilous central Mediterranean Sea.
        
        Salvini is sounding the alarm that the migrant reception center on the island, which would rather be known as a summertime tourist destination, is "collapsing,"with more than 1,500 people crammed into a space designed, by his count, for 357.
        
        "An absolute shame for Italy and for Europe," Salvini said, accusing his successor of hiding the actual numbers of migrants coming through Lampedusa with transfers to Sicily and elsewhere.
        
        Salvini is making immigration a key part of his campaign for Italy's parliamentary election next month. The Sept. 25th vote came after his right-wing anti-migrant League party, along with two other parties, yanked their support for outgoing Premier Mario Draghi’s 17-month-old pandemic unity government.