Middle-class migrants from Tunisia make a dash for Italy

THEY arrived looking as if they were going on holiday, complete with sunglasses, suitcases – and even a fluffy, white poodle on a lead.

Dressed in board shorts and T-shirts, 11 Tunisians turned up by boat on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa this week, seeking a new life in Europe. The group was intercepted by the Italian coastguard and brought to the island’s main port.

They are part of a new wave of migrants from Tunisia that has the Italian government worried. After years in which Italy had to deal with hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans crossing from Libya, Tunisians are now the main nationality arriving.

Of the 13,700 migrants arriving by boat this year, more than 5,300 are Tunisian. The overall number is still a small fraction of the asylum seekers from Libya in recent years – 181,000 in 2016 and 120,000 in 2017.

The exodus is being fuelled by a social, political and economic crisis. Tourism in Tunisia had already been badly affected by the terrorist attacks in 2015 but the pandemic and lockdown have plunged the economy into further crisis, worsening already widespread unemployment.

One member of the group who turned up with the poodle said: “I hope to find a job and freedom because Tunisia is full of prisons, it’s horrible.”

Many of the Tunisians who arrive appear middle-class and educated. “The economic crisis brought about by coronavirus was the detonator,” said Lorenzo Fanara, the Italian ambassador to Tunisia. “But there has been a long economic depression.”

Lampedusa is an obvious target – just 60 miles from the Tunisian coast and closer to North Africa than Sicily.

A few days ago, the island’s reception centre, which has a capacity for less than 100 migrants, was crammed with more than 1,000. The mayor called for a state of emergency, saying the island cannot handle such numbers. Some of the migrants have been transferred to centres in Sicily or the Italian mainland, easing the pressure a little.

In Italy, there is little appetite for taking them in and the government is doing all it can to apply diplomatic pressure on Tunis to stop the boats from leaving in the first place.

Several Italian regions say they will refuse to take in new arrivals. Adding to concern is the fear that some migrants could be infected with Covid-19.

The migrants are placed in quarantine when they arrive, but many simply slip free. Those who remain in the reception centres are likely to be sent back home under a repatriation agreement between Tunis and Rome.