by A.P.
More than 34,000 migrants have arrived in Italy this year
A hundred migrants arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Saturday after being picked up by the Italian Coast Guard from a boat that sank off the coast due to stormy weather. As the APA agency noted, all migrants who were rescued were transported to a migrant center on the island where they went through mandatory COVID-19 testing.
This year, more than 34,000 migrants have arrived in Italy via the Mediterranean. This is three times as many as in the previous year when the authorities recorded just over 11,000 migrants, according to Czech news portal Novinky.
Italy significantly tightened its migration policy in 2018 after Matteo Salvini, the head of the League party, served in the government as minister of the interior. Italy has rolled back many of the laws that Salvini implemented in order to stem the flow of migrants,
Among other things, the country closed Italian ports to the rescue vessels of non-profit organizations and imposed severe fines on the crews of ships that would violate the regulations.