(AFP) Italy’s new Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese said in an interview published Friday that there was no migrant “invasion,” countering statements by her hardline anti-immigration predecessor Matteo Salvini.
Lamorgese told the Repubblica newspaper that this year 9,600 migrants and asylum-seekers had arrived in Italy, compared with 22,000 in 2018.
Her comments were followed later Friday by an Interior Ministry announcement that of 88 migrants rescued by the German charity Sea-Eye’s Alan Kurdi ship on Oct. 26, “Germany and France will welcome 60, Portugal 5 and Ireland two.”
They would be allowed to disembark in the port of Taranto in Puglia in southern Italy, the ministry added.
