Before the Italian election in March of this year, the focus for Italian politicians was firmly on immigration. And since the new government formed, new Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a populist and nativist who leads the party formerly known as the Northern League and now called the League, is still milking the issue to gain support outside his party.
The highest profile incident happened in early June, when Salvini refused to allow a boat of migrants to land in southern Italy. The boat would later dock in Spain. While Salvini’s policies may have had little impact on migration overall — migration was down under the last government, too — there’s no doubt that his extremist anti-immigrant rhetoric is having an impact on Italian society and many of the migrants coming from the Middle East.
