Britain looks to Italy for help amid surge in Channel migrants

LONDON — Human rights groups have urged Britain not to copy Italy’s approach in trying to reduce the number of migrants arriving on its shores.

Their comments come after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer traveled to Rome this week to learn more about the country’s success in tackling irregular migration across the Mediterranean Sea. There has been a surge of migrants arriving in small boats from France on Britain’s southern shores. More than 800 people arrived on Saturday, pushing the total for the year so far to more than 22,000. Eight migrants drowned that same day after their inflatable dinghy hit rocks off the French coastline. The high number of migrant arrivals has become a major political issue that successive governments have struggled to solve. Starmer traveled to Italy on Monday for talks with his counterpart, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to learn more about her country’s recent success in tackling migration across the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa. “You've made remarkable progress working with countries along migration routes as equals, to address the drivers of migration at [the] source and to tackle the gangs. As a result, irregular arrivals to Italy by sea are down 60% since 2022. So, I am pleased that we are deepening our cooperation here,” Starmer told Meloni at a press conference after their meeting. Italy has struck deals with Libya and Tunisia worth millions of dollars to keep migrants from leaving their shores, through tougher policing on land and through the interception of boats offshore.

Human rights groups accuse those countries of committing widespread abuses against migrants. Rome also signed an agreement with Albania last year to send up to 36,000 asylum-seekers annually to the Balkan country for processing. “The model that the Italian Government has conceived of is based on centers to process asylum applications for those immigrants who disembark within Italian or EU jurisdiction, in a foreign country,” Meloni told reporters in Rome. “That is a model that was never experimented with before. If it works — as I hope it will — everybody can understand that this can become a new way to deal with migration flow,” she added. Questions remain over the legality of Italy’s approach, said Sacha Deshmukh, CEO of the human rights group Amnesty International UK. “Keir Starmer needs to be very careful about what lessons he thinks he should learn from Italy’s experience. Amnesty International has some deep concerns as to whether Italy is being compliant with its international legal obligations and its human rights obligations in elements of its approach, both in terms of its own practice, for example, of its migrant camps, but also in terms of Italy's deal that it struck with Albania,” Deshmukh told VOA. “What we would hope for would be countries like the UK to have a functioning asylum system, one that considered claims properly but swiftly, and dealt humanely with people who are fleeing terrible situations in many cases,” he added. There are also doubts about whether Britain could replicate Italy’s agreement with Albania, according to Raphael Bossong, a migration expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“To think that this can be reproduced in other settings where you don't have these particular things coming together, and to expect that there are many other countries lining up? Albania already officially said ‘no’ to various other countries who tried to follow suit. Never say never, but I think it's a highly doubtful proposition,” Bossong told VOA. Britain is giving France nearly $600 million over three years to boost the policing of French shores. Despite increased patrols along the French coast, the number of migrants who have made the journey so far this year is higher than at the same point in 2023. Prime Minister Starmer said his focus would be on returning failed asylum-seekers to their countries of origin and on better intelligence and policing to break up the smuggling gangs..