What could a far-right victory in Italy's elections mean for immigrants?

Polling stations in Italy opened their doors to voters on Sunday to choose a new parliament. The right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni is expected to control the vast majority of seats.

Voters were queuing in front of polling stations before they opened at 5 a.m. GMT, according to Agence France-Presse.

Voting continues until 9 p.m. GMT, after which the first opinion polls will be announced.

Hostility towards immigrants

Meloni, 45, has a hardline immigration policy and adheres to anti-immigrant ideas. Her statements and rhetoric have always been controversial.

Earlier, she called for the establishment of a sea barrier to prevent African immigrants from coming to her country, while stressing that if Italy needed immigrants, it would take them from Venezuela because they are Christians and some of them are of Italian origin.

The hostility toward immigrants is shared by her partner in the right-wing tripartite coalition, Matteo Salvini, head of the hardline Northern League Party. Salvini wishes himself to be the interior minister in the coming government in order to restore his first course of besieging immigrants at sea and preventing them from approaching the shores of his country.

Salvini, 49, served as interior minister and deputy prime minister in the government from June 2018 to September 2019. He was tried last year on charges of trapping 150 illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean, putting their lives at risk.

“I've done it before and I can't wait to do it,” Salvini said at a rally in Rome, bragging about what he did while serving as interior minister.

He also announced that he would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the embassy from Tel Aviv if he wins these elections.

In the 2018 elections, Salvini promised to deport half a million illegal immigrants. He also decided to stop permitting the construction of new mosques when he became a minister. Also, when the New Zealand mosque terrorist massacre took place in 2019, he commented that “the only extremism to be aware of is Islamic extremism.”

The island of Lampedusa will be a potential focus for the implementation of the immigration prevention and control policy. That island is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland. It has been a starting point for immigration from Africa and the Middle East since the Arab Spring of 2011.

Arrival numbers increased in 2015 driven by the war in Syria but declined during the coronavirus pandemic.

Until the end of August this year, 26,000 people arrived on the island, which has a permanent population of 6,000, with tens of thousands of tourists in the high season, all of whom are crammed into an area of no more than 20 square kilometers.

But talk of a naval blockade of migrants does not impress GiacomoMercurio, who heads the island's council.

In this regard, Mercurio said to The Times,“Words are easy... We have made a lot of changes in government over the past 20 years, but the situation remains the same.”

“It all comes down to geography. It is also our nature to welcome people,” he added.

“The Interior Minister will not prevent people from fleeing war or misery...only the weather or the wind can do that,” he continued.

The right: A real danger or a scarecrow?

A number of observers believe that the victory of the far-right Brothers of Italy party will constitute a political change in Italy, one of the founding countries of the European Union and the third economic power in the Eurozone.EU leaders are worried about having to deal with Meloni, who is close to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an advent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

According to The Times report, “The victory of the far-right Brothers of Italy party will be a nightmare for immigrants dreaming of reaching Europe by way of the Mediterranean.”

On the contrary, other experts believe that the “democratic” system in Italy will not be shaken if the right wins a historic victory, as the complex state institutions in Italy are too stable to be shaken by a right-wing electoral alliance. In the words of the Guardian, “Italy's democratic institutions will remain in place.”

This opinion is supported byKarimAboulGheit, a political researcher at the American University in Cairo, who believes that the issue of combating immigration will keep right-wing supporters united, as it is the easiest pledge that the Meloni-led coalition can make compared to other measures such as raising the low birth rate in Italy.

Regarding what foreigners might be exposed to if the rightwing wins, AboulGheit told Jusoor Post that “it is not in anyone's interest to expel foreigners from Italy, given the value of immigrants in the gross domestic product in a country with a high life expectancy.”

Aboul Gheit suggested to the Muslims of Italy that they “play the electoral match differently this time so that they show their support for the right and then negotiate with it and come out with gains.”

He pointed out that the right put on its list of candidates two Muslim women: SouadSebai of the Lega Nord party led by Salvini, and Sarah Kilani of the Brothers of Italy party led by Meloni.