Life is harsh for Italians on Lampedusa and it has been made even more challenging with the arrival (or the sinking) of each new boat filled with African and Middle Eastern migrants that ends up on its shores.
See the latest news that has European immigration officials in distress.
Here is an article (from AFP), spawned by the mass drowning, well worth reading (hat tip: pungentpeppers) about the resentment the local residents have to refugees who, in life or in death, get more government benefits than they do. Lampedusa’s lament….
Lampedusa — Islanders on Europe’s southern edge have become used to tragedy and trauma, they see it every day in the thousands of asylum seekers who land on their shores — and they say they have had enough.
The locals of the remote fishing community on Lampedusa island rush to help every time but their patience is wearing thin as they see government funds allocated to migrants and not to them.
“Here it’s the dead that keep the economy going,” said Silvana Martelli, a waitress, as divers fished out bodies after a shipwreck in which over 300 African refugees are feared to have died.
“It doesn’t feel like our island anymore. There’s money to take care of the immigrants while the schools fall apart and rubbish piles up,” she said.
As European ministers discuss the refugee crisis at talks in Luxembourg on Tuesday, this type of local resentment is a concern for governments that see the problem before them but do not want to risk being seen as a soft touch on immigration.
With a resident population of just a few thousand people, Lampedusans are sometimes outnumbered by the new arrivals before they are transferred to asylum centres on the Italian mainland.
In a corner of the harbour, the blue and red fishing boats daubed in Arabic script that are used for the landings lie discarded —
Read on about problems such as burying this many people on a tiny island, here.