The extreme right was elected yesterday in Italy.
What drove the Italians into the arms of such a party?
Simple.
A poorly controlled massive immigration.
THE RED CARPET ON THE FAR RIGHT
This is exactly what François Legault said.
Our PM may have been clumsy, he may have misspoken, but what he said was far from false.
The best way to roll out the red carpet for the far right is to throw the borders wide open and let in more immigrants than we can handle.
According to figures compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Italy absorbs nearly 56% of the global flow of illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.
From August 1, 2019 to July 31, 2020, 21,618 illegal migrants arrived on Italian shores, an increase of 148.7% compared to the previous year.
And according to a Tunisian NGO (the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights), between January 1 and August 31 of this year, 51,300 illegal immigrants from the Maghreb reached Italy by sea. These massive arrivals of migrants pose big problems for Italy, especially on the island of Lampedusa, whose reception capacities have long since reached saturation point.
With such a migratory flow, it is not surprising that the extreme right has the wind in its sails in Italy!
In fact, the opposite would be surprising.
A RISK FOR SOCIAL COHESION
At some point, you’re going to have to stop burying your head in the sand.
Contrary to what Justin Trudeau thinks, who, in May 2018, invited all migrants in the world to take refuge in Canada, no country can welcome all the poor on the planet.
On August 11, the economist Pierre Fortin (a calm man who cannot be accused of being on the far right!) wrote an important column in the magazine News (which, as far as I know, tends to lean more left than right).
Mr. Fortin was responding to the Quebec Employers Council, which asked the government to increase the number of permanent immigrants to 80,000 for the four years 2023 to 2026, then to 100,000 per year thereafter.
Here is what the economist wrote:
“A migration explosion that would suddenly increase the number of permanent immigrants from 50,000 to 100,000 a year would be quite reckless on the social level.
“It would risk stoking xenophobia and encouraging the rejection of immigration. We are already seeing this unfortunate development in Europe and the United States.
“Research in the field has shown that the too rapid introduction of immigration and ethnocultural diversity in a community tends to reduce relationships of trust, the degree of altruism, the interest in cooperating and social cohesion. »
THE PM WAS RIGHT
These are exactly the words that François Legault used at the beginning of the month.
“Non-French-speaking immigration, if not limited in number, is a threat to social cohesion…”
If Pierre Fortin can say it, I don’t see why our PM couldn’t…