Illegal alien “mother ship” captured off coast of Italy

A day at the beach in Italy: The bodies of the six drowned Eygptians were laid out on a popular beach in Catania, Sicily’s second city. Photograph: Dario Azzaro/AFP/Getty Images

Reuters has reported that Italian authorities have captured the so-called “mother ship” used recently to ferry Syrians (and North Africans) across the Mediterranean to Europe.  Illegal alien crossings (with a loss of life) have increased dramatically since that Obama Administration-applauded “Arab Spring” got underway in Africa.  The captured traffickers are Egyptians.

From Reuters:

 ROME (Reuters) – Italian authorities have seized a “mother ship” used to traffic illegal migrants across the Mediterranean and picked up about 200 Syrians fleeing the civil war in their homeland, officials said on Thursday.

European Union and Italian patrol boats chased down the fishing boat with a crew of 15 that had been used to ferry the immigrants into international waters near the Sicilian coast, prosecutors and police said.

The vessel’s crew had already transfered the refugees into a smaller boat for the final leg of their voyage. Italian police boats collected 199 migrants, including 64 children, all of whom were Syrian.

The fishing boat was towed back to the port of Catania in Sicily. The seizure of the mother ship was a result of an investigation into the drowning of six migrants off Sicily in August, prosecutors said in a statement.

The smugglers are part of an Egyptian crime group, they said. The exact departure point of the fishing boat was still unknown.

The numbers are growing and countries on the Mediterranean are feeling the crunch—most especially Italy and Malta.

 Almost 9,000 migrants reached Italy by boat between July 1 and August 10, the Interior Ministry said.

In the 12 months up to August 10, more than 24,000 came, compared with more than 17,000 in the same period a year earlier, and almost 25,000 in the 12 months before that, the ministry said.

The photo is from this story at The Guardian.

Italy: A day at the beach watching the illegal aliens come ashore

Families enjoying the last days of summer in Southern Italy must be wondering how that glorious Arab Spring worked out for them! Photo: UK Telegraph

Imagine this scene as beachgoers on the Italian mainland watched as a boatload of mostly Egyptians landed in front of them and the would-be asylum-seekers scampered ashore and into the hills.

Amazing that it’s been 40 years since French writer Jean Raspail envisioned the invasion of Europe by the Third World in his dark novel The Camp of the Saints.   How did he know?

This is the news yesterday from the UK Telegraph:

From her deckchair on a beach in southern Italy, Gina Bova watched with interest as the small, rickety fishing boat was pushed by the waves closer to the shore. It was a windy Saturday afternoon in August, and the beach was packed with holidaying families, picnicking on tubs of home made pasta and fresh figs.

26-year-old “human rights activist” from Rome says if you have a problem with this you are just “racist.”

But suddenly, as the boat hit the shallow sandbank, the passengers sprung overboard and made a dash to the shore, with police in hot pursuit.

“But there were lots more migrants than police,” said Mrs Bova, 63. “The police grabbed a few of them, but most ran up the beach and off into the hills. There wasn’t a lot anyone could do.”

Her feeling of inevitability is one shared by the Italian authorities – and their counterparts across Europe.

Around 1,000 migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa have landed in Italy in the last week alone, and the waves of migrants show no sign of decreasing.

There is more, read it all.

For all of our posts on the invasion of Italy, go here.

Here they come! More Muslim illegal aliens to Italy and Malta…

….which means more for America too!

They come via boat from mostly North Africa to seek asylum (they say) in the West.  The US has added an extra draw—we have transformed some of Malta’s illegal alien Somalis into legitimate refugees and brought them to your towns.

Migrants brought in by helicopter to Malta earlier this week. Photo: Times of Malta

Refugees are supposed to seek asylum in the first safe place they arrive, but the whole system has now been perverted because the US (during the Bush Administration!) changed the rules.  Asylum shopping is all the rage.

We told you about the controversial perversion of refugee law in RRW’s first month in existence in 2007.  Here is that short post, but it wasn’t until later that we understood the significance of what Bush did.

This is Malta’s and the European Union’s problem, not ours!

This is the news on the latest arrivals yesterday, from the UN:

5 July 2013 — The United Nations refugee agency estimates that some 8,400 migrants and asylum-seekers landed on the coasts of Italy and Malta in the first six months of this year, most of them from North Africa, having crossed the Mediterranean, one of the busiest seaways in the world.

Around 7,800 of the migrants and asylum-seekers arrived in Italy, while Malta received around 600, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Most of those making the journey departed from North Africa, principally Libya (around 6,700 people). The remaining 1,700 crossed from Greece and Turkey, landing in southern Italy.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the main places of origin of these migrants and asylum-seekers, particularly Somalia and Eritrea. Other countries of origin include Egypt, Pakistan and Syria. Nationals of Gambia, Mali and Afghanistan also make these crossings, but in smaller numbers, noted UNHCR.

[….]

“In view of the perils, UNHCR again calls on all vessels at sea to be on alert for migrants and refugees in need of rescue,” he said at a news conference in Geneva. “We also renew our call to all shipmasters in the Mediterranean to remain vigilant and to carry out their duty of rescuing vessels in distress.

“International and European law also requires States to ensure that people intercepted or rescued at sea who seek asylum can gain access to territory and to an asylum procedure where their international protection needs or claims can be examined,” he added.

No “pushback” from Malta allowed! 

A day before the above UN story, the Times of Malta reported on the arrival of more boats.  The US will be taking some off their hands!  Hey, do you think Europe might take some of our illegal aliens?  Not a chance!

The Malta office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said today that pushing back irregular migrants to their point of departure was not an option in view of the situation they faced in Libya.

In a statement, it noted that in less than 24 hours, four overcrowded boats were intercepted by Italy and Malta and almost 800 people were rescued. A total of 290 were brought to Malta.

A pushback policy was momentarily introduced some years ago following a controversial agreement between Italy and the Gaddafi regime, lambasted by humanitarian organisations.

“Those in need of international protection will now have the opportunity to have their asylum claims assessed. UNHCR Malta commends all entities and individuals involved in this effort,” the office said.

[….]

So far in 2013, around 600 asylum seekers have arrived in Malta, while almost 200 beneficiaries of protection have been assisted to settle in the US and other countries. [What other countries?—ed]

In fact we have taken 210 of Malta’s illegal alien boat people in the first 8 months of this fiscal year.  There were 191 cases which means the majority of the aliens we took were single (all men?).

You know that the possibility of winning the asylum prize—a free ticket to America—is a lure for more illegals to try to get to Malta.

For a gazillion previous posts on Malta, click here.

Watching the collapse of Europe: Italian asylum problems a harbinger of what is to come?

So what the hell is Italy supposed to do?  Here is an article from the hoiyty-toiyty at the New York Times chastising the Italian government for how it is handling the huge populations of immigrants flowing toward Europe.  Italy, and to a lesser extent Malta, are the first bits of land illegal aliens reach as they in ever-increasing numbers run from Africa and the glorious Arab Spring on-going there.   Here is just one of our recent posts on the topic.

According to this story in the NYT, Italy allows too many asylum seekers to stay and then doesn’t take care of them.  With the European economy teetering, how the heck can they take care of all these destitute people (America pay attention!)?   And, if they said they were going to deport more, the international ‘humanitarians’ would scream bloody murder over that!  It is a no-win situation for Italy.  The NYT calls it a “paradox:”

ROME — The abandoned university building on the outskirts of Rome, colloquially known as Salaam Palace, was once a sparsely populated makeshift shelter where new arrivals from Africa — fleeing war, persecution and economic turmoil — squatted to create their own refuge.

Over the years, scattered mattresses were joined by sloppily plastered plywood walls, slapdash doors and scavenged furniture. Today, an irregular warren of tiny rooms includes a small restaurant and a common room. On a recent cold afternoon, a hammer clinked as a bathroom was added to a one-room apartment where an oven door had been left open for heat.

More than 800 refugees now inhabit Salaam Palace, and its dilapidation and seeming permanence have become a vivid reminder of what its residents and others say is Italy’s failure to assist and integrate those who have qualified for asylum under its laws.

Salaam Palace and an expanding population in shantytowns elsewhere are the result of what refugee agencies say is an Italian paradox surrounding asylum seekers.

“Italy is quite good when in the asylum procedure, recognizing 40 percent, even up to 50 percent of applicants in some years,” said Laura Boldrini, the spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy. “What is critical is what comes after.”

She and others involved in aiding refugees say that neglect and absence of resources add unnecessary hardship to already tattered lives and are creating a potential tinderbox for social unrest.

One of the reasons the European Union came to be was so that all of the countries would share in trying to solve problems that in this case only stem from the geographic location of Italy.  But, Italians now see that they are, for the most part, alone in coping with the migrant problems from Africa.

Because of its geography, Italy is more exposed to migration from Africa, and it has called on other European Union countries to help bear the burden. Even so, the country has lagged in its own response, refugee agencies say.

“It has never invested in a system that’s structural,” said Ms. Boldrini, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Every year is treated as if it’s any emergency.”

Under European Union rules, asylum seekers must stay in the country in which they entered Europe, and can be sent back if they go elsewhere. Many residents of Salaam Palace say they sought something better, in France, Britain or Germany, but found themselves back in Rome.

Read it all!

So, when are we in the US going to start taking Italy’s illegal aliens as we do Malta’s?  Our lengthy ‘Malta’ archive is here.

Time to read The Camp of the Saints?   Change the locale to Italy rather than France, and the origin of the onslaught Africa rather than India.

Here is what one reviewer at Amazon says about the nearly 40-year-old DARK novel:

This book is so politically incorrect that I admire Amazon.com for actually carrying it. Written in the early 1970s, this book looks beyond the cold war to a North-South confrontation in which European civilization is unilaterally morally disarmed. The thesis is simple: suppose a million starving people from the Ganges actually took Western rhetoric of compassion, explotiation, etc., to heart, and comandeered, en masse, shipping, with the intention of moving to the shores of France? (Raspail, of course, is French.) Would anyone stop them? The imagery employed is interesting. The title comes from Revelation, Chapter 20, and refers to the forces of evil laying seige to the camp of the saints, here meant to be the nations of the West…..

Libyan “refugees” want their rights to social services in Italy

We talked about the mess that Obama helped create when he and several European leaders decided to depose Muammar Gaddafi in their zeal to spread the Arab Spring across North Africa here just a few days ago when former Libyan rebels toured US border crossings.   Following the overthrow of Gaddafi, tens of thousands of economic migrants launched themselves from Libyan shores (escaping the joys of the Arab Spring) and landed in Europe (Malta and Italy mostly).

I’d like to know if the rebels in charge of Libya are going to close their ports so that no more “refugees” can embark to Europe?  The rebels are Arabs and I wouldn’t be surprised if they ‘permitted’ those other dark-skinned ethnic groups to skip the country and head to Italy and Malta.

Last Sunday, hundreds of asylum seekers protested in an Italian city demanding their right to stay and get on welfare.

From Struggles in Italy (a lefty blog):

 On Sunday, December 16, a group of migrants fleeing Libya demonstrated in the streets of Reggio Emilia, the city where they are currently living. Several associations called for the rally, including Associations Città Migrante, GA3, Emergency Reggio Emilia and Laboratorio Aq16. The migrants reminded everyone that the City of Reggio Emilia has not, to date, granted residency to asylum seekers from Libya; as their banner read, they want to be “no longer refugees, but citizens”.

In the wake of Gaddafi’s overthrow, around 20,000 people fled Libya and arrived in Italy, a country with a population of 60 million. Such numbers are hardly an “emergency”, the ridiculously inaccurate description used in the media and political discourse.

Following the Italian civil protection agency’s North Africa emergency plan, the asylum seekers were distributed across the country, according to agreements with the regions, provinces and municipalities, and according to each area’s population density. In the past year and a half, the Province of Reggio Emilia has received 200 migrants.

Most of the asylum seekers are not Libyan nationals: they originally fled other countries such as Somalia, Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Chad, Sudan, the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Burkina Faso, but they were living and working in Libya at the time of the revolution.

So, why couldn’t they just stay and work there after the glorious revolution?