Italian PM Meloni’s Plan to Send Migrants to Albania for Asylum Processing Approved in Lower Parliament Chamber, Expected to Also Clear Senate Vote

The burden of dealing with unchecked mass migration has become a top priority all over Europe, as many societies are on the brink economically, culturally and even in terms of security.

For those conservative European leaders, the issue is even more dire, as their failure so far to tackle the issue is reflecting very poorly on their polling numbers ahead of this year’s elections for the European Parliament.

Every country is scrambling to find its own way of dealing with the scourge – and the solution found by Italian Prime Minister is not much different from British PM Rishi Sunak’s struggling ‘Rwanda plan’.

Back in November, Albania agreed to give temporary shelter to some of the thousands of migrants who reach Italian shores while their asylum bids are being processed, offering its neighbor across the Adriatic Sea some relief in managing some of the arrivals.

According to Reuters, “Italy will pay for the construction of two centers in Albania which can hold up to 3,000 migrants at a time, under the deal. Children and pregnant women will be excluded from the plan. If Italy rejects the asylum bids, Albania would deport the migrants. Albania would also provide external security for the two centers, which would be under Italian jurisdiction, Meloni told reporters.

Meloni said if asylum applications are swiftly processed, as many as 36,000 migrants could be sent for processing on Albanian territory annually. That could help relieve chronic overcrowding at initial asylum processing centers in Italy, where over the last years, hundreds of thousands of migrants have set foot after making risky sea voyages across the Mediterranean from Libya, Tunisia, Turkey and other countries.”

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama shows solidarity to Meloni in a pact that benefits both parties.

Meloni called Albania ‘not only a friend of Italy, but also a friend of the European Union’, as Italy is a major supporter of Albania’s bid to join the European Union.

While in the UK Sunak’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ seems to have hit a snag in the House of Lords, in Italy, Meloni’s plan appears to be sailing smoothly.

ABC News reported:

“Italy’s lower chamber of parliament on Wednesday approved a novel government deal with Albania to house migrants during the processing of their asylum requests, a cornerstone of Premier Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to share the migration burden with the rest of Europe.

The proposal, which passed 155-115 with two abstentions in the Chamber of Deputies, now goes to the Senate, where Meloni’s right-wing forces also have a comfortable majority.”

Even über globalist European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has endorsed the deal. She described it the necessary ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking to address the mass migration issue.

But, as you would expect, human rights groups, as well as the leftist opposition, have expressed concern.

For parliamentarian Laura Boldrini, former spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Italy, the deal is ‘a public relations campaign by the Meloni government’. The goal, as she sees it, is to trick voters into believing that migrants aren’t arriving anymore.

“She criticized in particular the preliminary screening that the migrants would undergo at sea aboard Italian vessels to determine who among them are considered ‘vulnerable’, including unaccompanied minors, pregnant women but also victims of trafficking and rape. Those people could be brought to Italy to have their asylum cases processed here, rather than remotely from the Albanian centers.

‘They say, because it is not written anywhere, that no trafficking victims, women victims of rape, of torture will be sent (to Albania)’, Boldrini said. ‘But how will they determine and screen them? It’s not like it’s written on their faces’.”

At best, 36,000 migrants a year can be sent to Albania, a number that is dwarfed by the 160,000 migrants that arrived in Italy via boat in 2023, most departing from Tunisia or Libya.

Italy says that ‘this would enable Italy’s migrant processing centers to work better and faster to screen candidates for possible asylum, without getting overwhelmed’.

What they are not saying but it’s also likely is that the plan will act as a deterrent, forcing migrants to go elsewhere, rather than face going to the Albanian camps.

Read more:

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and U.K.’s Rishi Sunak Join Forces to Tackle Mass Migration to Europe

 

The post Italian PM Meloni’s Plan to Send Migrants to Albania for Asylum Processing Approved in Lower Parliament Chamber, Expected to Also Clear Senate Vote appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.