EU migrant Crisis: Mayor of Rome warns against accepting more migrants

Italy’s Mayor Virginia Raggi has asked the Italian interior minister to apply stricter measures to the influx of foreigners in the Capital. The warning comes while the European Union has taken a stricter stance towards Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland for not accepting EU migrant quotas. Italy and Greece remain in the frontline of the European battle against the Migrant crisis. The vast majority of the migrants have come to Europe via Greece or Italy. She sent a letter to the interior ministry outlining the need for a moratorium on the continued influx of foreign citizen. She said in the letter that she finds it impossible, as well as risky to think up further accommodation structures, “This administration, given the high flows of unregistered migrants, hopes the assessments of new facilities take into account the evident migrant pressure on Roma Capitale and the possible devastating consequences in terms of social costs as well as for the protection of the beneficiaries themselves."

According to the most recent figures published by the local government, as of January 2016, there were 364,632 foreigners living in Rome, making up 12.7 percent of the total population compared to 8.3 percent for Italy overall. She urged rest of the European countries to do their part in shouldering the burden of migrant crisis, Let’s put it this way, Rome would be better off if European states didn’t build walls along their borders, but rather followed through on their obligations and respected the migrant quotas agreed upon by the EU”. In total, nearly 21,000 asylum-seekers have been distributed throughout Europe, some 14,000 from Greece and the rest from Italy. But this figure is much lower than the targets under migrant quotas.