The United Nations (UN) has demanded Brussels reform asylum rules, declaring that distributing asylum seekers equally throughout the bloc is “the only way” Europe can house every third world migrant who wants to make the continent their home.
Branding Italy’s decision to close its ports to a boat of 629 migrants “shameful”, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi demanded European Union (EU) countries make it as easy as possible for open borders-backing NGOs to continue ferrying immigrants from Africa to Europe.
“It is shameful. As a European, I felt shame — shame — that there was a boat — there is a boat — in the Mediterranean, and for several days nobody wanted to take these people,” he said Wednesday, as the migrant-packed vessel rejected by Italy was on its way to Spain.
“I think that closing ports, whoever does it, threatens rescue at sea, as we have seen in the case of the Aquarius, and therefore is not the right solution,” he told Reuters journalists in Geneva.
“We have to have predictable arrangements, so that rescue boats know where to go,” he added, warning that “otherwise, this [could be] a disincentive to rescue, [and] people may lose their lives if this doesn’t happen.”
Since migrant delivery NGOs stepped up their activities in the Mediterranean, over the past few years Italy has been burdened with approximately half a million illegal immigrants whose crime rate has been found to be significantly higher than that of native Italians, according to a study by Italy’s largest business association.
“We need to listen” to Italy, Grandi said, stating that the nation’s populist government was “right to say” the nation cannot welcome every boat of third world migrants wishing to make Europe their home.
The High Commissioner for Refugees, an Italian himself, pronounced that the only solution is to let them all in and then give Brussels the power to distribute newcomers equally throughout the bloc.
“It’s very clear that Europe needs to reform its asylum system in a collective manner; there’s a lot of resistance to that but there’s no other way,” Grandi said.
While acknowledging that the controversial EU quota system — which would have seen illegal immigrants arriving to the bloc forced on unwilling nations — was “a failure”, the UN figure insisted: “Unless Europe goes back to this notion of sharing the burden, we will not get out of this situation.”
The decision of Italy’s populist new government to turn away the Aquarius ship, which is carrying migrants mostly from West Africa and Bangladesh, was on Tuesday denounced as “sickening” by French president Emmanuel Macron.
Previously, Breitbart London has reported how the globalist European leader has declared the EU is entering an “unprecedented” age of mass migration, and said that “bombshell” population growth in Africa means the two continents’ destinies are bound.
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