The small Italian island of Lampedusa is being overwhelmed by the number of migrants arriving on its shores, its mayor said on Thursday, after thousands of people landed from North Africa on flimsy boats over the past two days.

The small Italian island of Lampedusa is being overwhelmed by the number of migrants arriving on its shores, its mayor said on Thursday, after thousands of people landed from North Africa on flimsy boats over the past two days.

  • @Eq0@literature.cafeEnglish
    7•1 year ago

    Between many other things: EU needs more immigration. But doing so the right way doesn’t feed the populist agenda, so we do it the most inhumane way we can manage, exploiting the immigrants without integrating them, expecting them to contribute for 5-10 years and then “go back to their country”.

    • @akrot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Absolutely agree. Being an immigrant myself (came to study), I watched the EU society get rekt by its unchecker open border policy. Then countries like sweden who did not like the status of the new crime and welfare KPis started hiding them from yearly stats. It’s ugly. Furthermore, educated migrants who want to come to Europe have such a huge barrier of entry. I faced this myself when applying. Never understood why it’s so easy to hop on a boat and you’re welcome with wide arms, but if you study and work hard all of your life, and you want to contribute positively, here some hoops you have to jump through to get in the EU.

      But maybe the worse part is, the reputation of migrants have drastically changed, which affected everyone. When I first moved to Lund pre-syrian war, it was a great city. Even the treatment then felt so different. Fastforward 10 years, and Malmö has shifted the public perception in Sweden being the poster child of migration.