Lombardy Governor Roberto Maroni
on Friday tweeted "prepare for an invasion" of illegal
immigrants as a result of an impending decree by Italian Premier
Matteo Renzi to depenalise illegal immigration.
The leader of Maroni's anti-immigrant Northern League,
Matteo Salvini, wrote on his Facebook page that his party would
launch a referendum "against this shameful thing", referring to
the decree.
National antimafia prosecutor Franco Roberti said the
depenalisation will help authorities to identify human
traffickers.
Roberti said the current law making illegal immigration a
crime "hinders investigations" and that "data show (the law)
hasn't had a dissuasive effect thus far".
Meanwhile on Friday, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said
immigrants should be able to receive European-wide asylum, not
asylum specific to the individual EU country they first enter,
as stipulated by the Dublin Regulation.
"On the altar of Dublin we're risking sacrificing
Schengen," said Gentiloni, referring to the common visa policy
among 26 European countries that abolished passport checks at
their internal borders.
"The European Union is like an apartment building where
everyone fights with their neighbors, except for when they all
fight together against the one who watches over the entrance, in
this case Greece," Gentiloni said.
The foreign minister also said that "for those who don't
have the requisites to be taken in, repatriation should also be
a European task".
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