Number Of “Harraga” (Illegal Immigrants) Slumped From Algeria to Italy

Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese announced that “there has been a continuing downward trend in arrivals of illegal immigrants from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria since November 2021”.

“This tendency intensified strongly in March, when we recorded 437 immigrants from Libya, which is less than a third compared to March 2021, when their number reached 1,505,” the minister said in a hearing before the parliamentary “Schengen” committee, on Wednesday.

The minister added, “We have also witnessed a easing of pressure on the side of arrivals from Tunisia, a trend that began in September 2021 and strengthened in the first two months of 2022,” noting that “from January 1 to March 29, 1,494 people arrived in Italy, while in the same period of last year, we recorded 2080 people, a decrease of 27%.

Lamorgese pointed out, “Only 55 arrivals were registered from Algeria during 2022, compared to 253 in the same period last year, while no one arrived from this country in the past two months”.

Speaking about migrations in the Mediterranean region, the Italian minister stated that, from January 1 to March 29, 2022, 6,701 migrants arrived in Italy, and 3,323 as a result of search and rescue operations, including 1,595 after the intervention of non-governmental organization ships, while the self-docking operations amounted to 3,378.
Lamorgese noted that “in 2021, a total of 67,477 illegal migrants arrived in Italy, and the majority of migrants still set off from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia”.

She concluded by saying that “in the aforementioned period, 4,236 migrants arrived from Libya, with a slight hike compared to the first three months of 2021”.