Italy’s contested bid to crack down on migrants sparks flap

ROME — Bogged down by leftist opposition amendments, Italy‘s Senate on Tuesday delayed the start of a debate on the right-wing government’s contested immigration crackdown, while a minister’s warning to Italians about “ethnic substitution” triggered anger.

Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, made the controversial comment in a speech at a labor union gathering, Lollobrigida, who hails from Premier Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots, warned Italians against surrendering to the idea that they “have fewer children and substitute themselves with someone else.”

Lollobrigida’s words are “disgusting,″ said lawmaker Elly Schlein who leads the Democratic Party, Parliament’s largest opposition force. She said the comments evoke the notion of “white supremacy” and hark back to the 1930s, when Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime rewarded Italians who had large families.

Meloni campaigned for election as Italy’s first far-right premier last fall on a platform that included a pledge to help Italians have children. The country has one of the world’s lowest birth rates, and a significant percentage of births are now registered to non native-born Italians. In Italy’s northern Emilia-Romagna region, for instance, 24% of births occur in families where both parents are migrants, according to the national statistics agency.

With the new proposed legislation, Meloni and her right-wing coalition government allies want to eliminate or vastly limit the “special protection” status Italian authorities have granted to thousands of asylum-seekers who are unlikely to have their applications approved. Holders of that status can stay in Italy for two years and legally work during that time.

But with the Democratic Party presenting hundreds of amendments, the Senate was forced to delay the start of debate till Wednesday. The lower Chamber of Deputies will take up the proposed crackdown after Senate passage. Meloni’s coalition has a comfortable majority in both chambers of Parliament.

Successive Italian governments have pressed their EU partners for years, largely in vain, to take in many of the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers who reach Italy’s Mediterranean shores. Most risk the dangerous, expensive sea voyage in hopes of finding family or work in northern Europe, but EU rules require them to apply for asylum in the country where they landed.

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