Populist Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini is expected to drastically cut the daily allowance for migrants in Italy, with claims the country could see savings of up to 400 million euros by 2019.
The proposal would see the current daily allowance of 35 euros per day per migrant cut almost in half to 19 euros per day, which would be one of the lowest rates in western Europe, Il Giornale reports.
According to the Interior Ministry, the cuts would lead to a saving of 400 million euros in 2019, rising to 500 million in 2020 and 600 million in the years thereafter.
The move would be part of the broader migration and security decree released by Salvini in late September, which also banned residency permits for so-called humanitarian reasons. Migrants will now be classified into two groups: those with recognized asylum claims and those without.
Those with refugee status and recognized underage migrants will have broader access to funding and government programmes.
Since coming into power, Salvini has managed to greatly reduce the number of migrants coming into Italy by closing Italian ports to migrant rescue NGO vessels who have been accused in the past of co-operating with people smugglers.
After largely dealing with the issue of migrants entering Italy illegally, Salvini has since set his sights on deportations of existing illegals. Earlier this week he announced a new plan to invest 12 million euros to fund the deportation of at least 2,700 illegals starting in February and ending in 2021.
One of the arguments espoused by pro-mass migration open borders advocates has been using mass migration to counter the falling birthrates in western European nations.
Salvini has made his opposition to so-called replacement migration clear, saying: “I believe that I’m in government in order to see that our young people have the number of children that they used to a few years ago, and not to transplant the best of Africa’s youth to Europe.”
In order to convince Italians to have more children, the government has even offered free farmland to couples having three or more children.