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Matteo Salvini, leader of the Italian far-right league, did not take long to praise the decision of the Spanish government led by the Socialists send the military when thousands of migrants entered its territory.
“Spain is defending its borders,” Salvini said of this month’s scenes in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa where soldiers were deployed to ward off mostly Moroccan arrivals. “Now it’s our turn.”
I wanted to contrast with Lampedusa, the advanced Italian island that is one of the main destinations for ships crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa and where more than 1,000 undocumented migrants arrived this month in a 24-hour period.
Although the circumstances in Lampedusa are very different from those in Ceuta, where a Spanish-Moroccan agreement allowed the rapid return of the vast majority of those who crossed the border, Spain and Italy share very similar predicates on immigration.
They are currently the two main EU frontline states for migrants crossing the Mediterranean: last year 42,000 people arrived in Spain according to the International Organization for Migration, compared to 34,000 in Italy and 15,000 in Greece.
Italy and Spain also face serious demographic challenges arising from the rapidly aging populations.
In fact, just two days after mobilizing Spanish troops to help close undocumented immigrants to Ceuta, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez unveiled research exposing Spain’s dependence on large-scale immigration over the coming decades.
The paper, Spain 2050, a product of one-year work by academics and analysts, argued that even if the country maintained a net immigration of 191,000 a year for the next three decades (slightly below the recent historical average ), its working-age population would fall 3.7 million from its current level of about 31m.
He acknowledged that this corridor could reduce the size of the economy and jeopardize the country’s welfare state.
By contrast, the document said that if net immigration were higher, at 255,000 a year, the drop in the available workforce would be halved, to 1.8 million by 2050.
Diego Rubio, the person in charge who coordinated the report, stated that there was no contradiction in the government’s position. “The fight against irregular immigration at our borders and the promotion of legal immigration in our villages are perfectly compatible,” he said.
He continued: “Spain is open to those who seek a better future because it is a country with a sense of solidarity that knows that we need people from abroad to fight demographic decline and ensure the country’s prosperity and well-being through long term. ”
In a reminder of the issues at stake, the OECD predicted on Thursday that Spain would become the member state in 2050 with the highest dependency ratio of old age (the proportion of more than 65 years compared to working-age population) after Japan and South Korea.
Spain remains less concerned about immigration than other European countries. According to a recent one Eurobarometer survey, less than one in three Spaniards cited migration as one of the main challenges of the bloc, below an EU-wide average of 44%.
However, the issue has become more sensitive with the emergence of the right-wing party Vox, which invokes against illegal migrants even in regional elections and has denounced both the government’s management of the incursions. in Ceuta as the Spain 2050 document. Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, described the proposal as a “plan” to replace the [Spanish] population ”.
If the rise of Vox has made the discussion on immigration more controversial in Spain, the debate in Italy, where the Salvini League leads the polls, is even more full.
In part, due to lower recent immigration rates, there are demographic problems in Italy even more serious than that of Spain. Last year the country’s population fell by almost 400,000 people, the equivalent of losing the entire population of Florence, in the biggest drop in more than a century.
But generalist politicians have been very reluctant to suggest increasing migration as a solution.
Instead, Salvini and other anti-immigrant leaders have called for an increase in the birth rate. When Tito Boeri, then head of the Italian pension agency, suggested three years ago that the country needed more legal migration, Salvini, then the interior minister, accused him of “living on Mars.” Boeri was replaced shortly after.
Now, as improved weather increases the likelihood of more migrant ships crossing the Mediterranean, the issue is once again raising the political agenda.
Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, has announced plans to reduce illegal arrivals by working closely with the governments of Libya and Tunisia and redistribute immigrants among EU member states.
He has promised to pursue a “human” policy where “no one will be left alone in Italian waters.” Still, 130 migrants are believed to have drowned off the coast of Libya last month, a tragedy denounced by Pope Francis as a “moment of shame.”
Both Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing opposition party Brothers of Italy, have denounced the recent rise in arrivals from Libya to islands such as Sicily and Lampedusa.
Some advocates express that these anti-migrant policies mark the agenda. “It’s a very important issue for politicians, as it greatly influences voters,” said Marta Bernardini of the NGO Mediterranean Hope, which works in Lampedusa.
“Left-wing parties are afraid of populism and, at the moment, do not present a clear vision of migration policy,” he said.
Despite these tensions, Mariona Lozano, a researcher at the Center for Demographic Studies in Barcelona, argued that, at least for Spain, the influx of recent years should continue.
“Migration responds to economic pressures,” he said. “The vast majority of of foreign birth the people of Spain come from America and Europe, but migration from North Africa is the oldest route and will not stop ”.
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