Featured: Migrants arriving to Lampedusa. Source: Actual News Magazine.

We publish an unofficial translation of the article publish by Peruvian comrades, to be found here.

We have updated our article on the so-called “migration crisis” with the statements of experts on the matter, the same ones who support what we have maintained and which we reproduce below the statements:

Over-clear visibility on Lampedusa

“There is no flood with migrants,” says geographer Camille Schmoll, which specializes in migration. “We speak of very few people, measured by the large rating countries in the world.” Turkey alone houses 3.6 million migrants, Iran more than three million.

“You focus on Lampedusa because the pictures are impressive and because there is a clear visibility.” – Camille Schmoll

This has to do with “that the island cramped and the recording center is overcrowded,” says Schmoll. This situation has occurred again and again since 2011 when 60,000 people landed on the island within a few months.

Expert: Lampedusa has a “logistical problem”

The Italian government makes a serious allegations: this leads to the permanent overcrowding “deliberately” in order to make a crisis, criticizes the researcher. Her colleague Henry also speaks of a staging of the Italian authorities with a view to the overcrowding of the center in Lampedusa.

Lampedusa has more of a “logistical problem,” says French migration researcher Matthieu Tardis. “If these few thousand people had ended up on the Italian mainland, it would not have triggered polemics. We are dealing with political instrumentalization,” says Tardis.

The debate is fueled by “racist arguments” that were accompanied by “spectacular pictures” but did not reflect the reality of the migration movements, says Henry.

There is primarily talk of Africans from countries south of the Sahara. However, according to European statistics, people who apply for asylum in Europe come mainly from Syria (138,000), Afghanistan (132,000), Turkey (58,000), Venezuela (51,000) and Colombia (43,000).

(Source: ZDF, Experten zu Lampedusa: “Es gibt keine Überschwemmung mit Migranten”, 19.09.2023, https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/lampedusa-fluechtling-italien-meloni-kritik-100.html)

Collusion and content between the imperialist countries of the EU and, within these countries, between the imperialist factions and groups within them, represented by the different parties and their leaders, as it appears in their media, has been increasing because of this so-called new “migration crisis”, given the situation that occurred on the Italian island of Lampedusa. There, thousands of people were struggling to be admitted as asylum seekers in the “EU”. A situation that the German newspaper FAZ, on 14th of September, summarized as follows:

“The Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa puts the arrival of thousands of boat migrants within a few days. In the completely overcrowded initial reception center in the center of the small island, there were partly chaotic scenes on Thursday. Videos showed how people – many recognizably exhausted – were very crowded in the blazing sun, and security forces were at the gates of the camp. There was unrest in the fray. In Italian media, an “explosive” mood was read.

Since the beginning of the week, far more than 8,000 boat migrants have reached the small island between Sicily and North Africa. Around 5,000 people arrived on Tuesday alone. Because of the proximity to the Tunisian coastal city of Sfax, Lampedusa has been one of the focal points of migration to Europe for years. The city council of the island excluded the emergency on Wednesday evening. It was unclear what precise consequences this had. Mayor Filippo Mannino demanded more financial and logistical support for the island from the government in Rome, which is under “great stress”.

According to media reports, the camp has never been so overcrowded – the situation was already tense on Wednesday evening. According to the distribution of food and drinks, there were reportedly chaotic scenes. Previously, people tried to leave the port and break barriers. The situation was tense again on Thursday. Migrants stood out at the high gates of the camp – in between exhausted or powerful people are carried out in order to be treated by paramedics and paramedics.

Since January, 123,800 people have reached Italy on boats

This year, more migrants have reached Italy on the sea route than in the entire previous year. People mostly break up in unstable and uninhibited metal boats towards Europe – some arrive on their own, others are brought ashore by the coast guard or civilian sea rescue officers. According to figures from the Interior Ministry in Rome, more than 123,800 people have been registered since January who reached Italy – 65,500 in the previous year. If the trend continues, the record number of 2016 could be exceeded by the end of the year. At that time 181,000 people came.

(Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Migranten auf Lampedusa : „Die Insel befindet sich in einer Krise””, 14.09.2023, https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/lampedusa-tausende-neue-migranten-erreichen-insel-im-mittelmeer-19175029.html)

As can be seen from the newspaper article, thousands of immigrants, ready for everything, are standing in front of the security guards who keeps the “reception” camp. This happens after these immigrants have risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean, fleeing from hunger, misery, repression and reactionary war unleashed by the lackeys of the imperialists in their countries and, if not so, then unleashed by the imperialists themselves.

As well, they flee from the humanitarian catastrophe caused by foreseeable natural catastrophes and whose consequences can be reduced or avoided if the big landlord-bureaucratic States at the service of imperialism, through their lackey rulers, had taken the common civil defense measures against this chaos. That is why we say, catastrophes affect these great human masses mainly due to the abandonment and criminal non-working of the system.

These masses, who today occupy the front pages of the world’s mass media, are masses of the poorest, most exploited and most oppressed of backward or Third World countries. They come to the countries of the European Union searching for shelter, to save their lives and get out of the Dantesque hell to which imperialism, semi-feudality and bureaucratic capitalism condemn them.

This “migration crisis” expresses in a particular way the main contradiction, that is, imperialism-oppressed nations and the third contradiction, the inter-imperialist one. And, naturally, in the most diverse forms will further promote the development of the bourgeoisie-proletariat contradiction. This is because a large part of the masses that are admitted to the countries of the so-called European Union, will become the deepest and broadest layer of the proletariat.

These masses have been believing in the formal right to life and asylum that with their struggles they have achieved to register in national and international treaties and laws as international humanitarian and human rights law. Reactionary propaganda has made them believe that all statements on human rights and the Geneva Convention are accomplished as a general rule, when the truth is that their accomplishment is limited, it is only the exception and depends on the interests and needs of the imperialists.

These migrants are demanding that the formal right to a dignified life and to asylum or refuge be fulfilled and, furthermore, that the belligerent powers, from previous and present wars, accomplish to grant them assistance and protection, as mandatory by international law of war.

These thousands of migrants represent the great mass of millions and millions of poor people on earth, who the system in the last 600 years has stripped of all the conditions to be able to develop their countries. It is enough to remember how the economies of the great empires of America were destroyed and all industrial development was prevented by the Spanish and Portuguese commercial monopoly. In India the newborn textile industry was crushed and, like in Egypt, the English capitalists used it for the production of semi-products or raw materials such as cotton for the English industry, and for produce cheap food for England to keep the real wages of English workers low.

Today, this immense human mass is at the doors of Europe to demand the realization of that formal right that the representatives and owners of the current international order of oppression and exploitation are so proud of. Of those struggling to enter the EU, there are dozens if not hundreds who die each year while crossing the Mediterranean. Even so, migrants would rather die trying than return to the destruction and suffering that imperialism has caused in their countries of origin.

We must not forget that the dead people in the Mediterranean are mainly victims of the repressive policy against migrants, against the displacement of populations from the south to the north, which responds to the current population law, which is the one that corresponds to the current moment of greater decomposition of imperialism and its sick son, bureaucratic capitalism, in the period of “50 to 100” years, in which imperialism will be swept away from the face of the earth by the world revolution, through the people’s war.

Despite what was said above, these days, the president of the EU, completely cynically, calls for repressing the migrants who, using the means and routes at their disposal to reach safety, cross the Mediterranean, with the pretext of repressing the “people traffickers or smugglers.” As if these were the cause and not the effect and even the tragic, cruel, but necessary evil for those who want to reach the other side of the border of the imperialist countries. In the mind of most people there is the still unpunished massacre of Melilla in June last year, as part of this continued genocide by the imperialists against the starving people of Africa and other Third World countries.

Due to this situation of “migration crisis”, repeating the usual verbosity, the president of the EU Commission von der Leyen has traveled to give her support to the president of the Italian government, Meloni, who won the elections by offering drastic measures to stop migration to her country. Her statements before being candidate in the last elections varied from openly xenophobic to moderate to achieve better opportunities of success for this policy in the EU. This is a contradiction in itself for anyone who work on this issue, as we pathetically can see in the following news. But, as Marx wrote in Capital on the contradictions of capitalism, these are not contrary to the theory but to the reality of the development of the capitalist system, today in its imperialist stage.

On 17th of this month, media reported on the travel to Lampedusa of Mrs. von der Leyen and Meloni. The ZDF (German Broadcast) titled: “Migration Crisis on Lampedusa: Von der Leyen: Surveil the Mediterranean stronger”, saying:

“In view of the many crossings of migrants via the Mediterranean, monitoring of the EU’s outer border is to be reinforced. This was said by Commission President von der Leyen.

Overcrowded collecting camps, stalling negotiations on a new asylum law: Europe’s migration policy threatens to fail. The solidarity of the EU countries appeals von der Leyen.

According to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU outer border should be strengthened at sea and from the air. “We can do this via Frontex,” said von der Leyen with a view to the EU border protection agency on Sunday in the presence of the Italian head of government Giorgia Meloni on the island of Lampedusa.

10-point plan: train Tunisian coast guard

From the Leyen added that she supported it to explore options for expanding existing naval operations in the Mediterranean or to work on new missions.

The offer is part of a 10-point plan that von der Leyen introduced at the press conference with Meloni. This also provides to improve the training of the Tunisian coast guard and other law enforcement authorities.

Leyen: Take a harder against smugglers

From Tunisia, a particularly large number of migrants start on mostly naval boats towards Italy. From the Leyen also announced a harder approach to smugglers. But she also emphasized:

“The most effective measure against the lies of smugglers are legal ways and humanitarian corridors.” – Ursula von der Leyen

The better the legal migration is done, the more strictly you could act with irregular migration.

Von der Leyen: EU countries are supposed to accommodate migrants

Von der Leyen emphasized that more people’s returns needed to be rejected. The EU Asylum Agency is supposed to help Italy register new refugees – they also promised support to bring migrants from the overloaded island of Lampedusa.

Von der Leyen appealed also to the other EU countries to voluntarily accept migrants from Italy. From Meloni’s perspective, the prevention of the crossings of migrants is the only solution to the current situation, she made clear on Sunday.

(Source: ZDF, Flüchtlingskrise auf Lampedusa: Von der Leyen: Mittelmeer stärker überwachen, 17.09.2023, https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/von-der-leyen-lampedusa-gefluechtete-meloni-100.html)

CONCLUSIONS:

– Immigration is an issue that shakes the illusion of unity between the States of the so-called European Union. The statements of the president of the EU express that false balance that she tries to present between those who are in favor of the controlled anti-immigration and restricted asylum policy, led by Germany, because it is the one that best suits their political, economic, military, etc. interest and the strict anti-immigration and anti-asylum policy led by representatives of Third-World EU countries such as Orban of Hungary or Poland, whose government has just exploded in the face of corruption for the sale of visas to certain migrants. With time, the Italy of Meloni has placed itself in the center and has received pro-EU approval for her good behavior from the German chancellor and the French president.

– The denial of the application or fulfillment of the right to refuge and asylum for just causes recognized by the international and national order of the imperialists and reactionaries of the world, finds its concrete expression in the three specific particularities outlined in the previous paragraph. Therefore, only the struggle of the masses will be able to confront the repression of every order that has been announced by von der Leyen against the migrant movement and thus achieve victories. But, like all the rights formally recognized by the imperialist and bureaucratic-big landlord States at the service of imperialism, they can only be fully realized with the democratic revolution and moreover with the socialist revolution and, fully, only when we enter communism, which will also demand a revolution.

– On one hand, it is true that refugees cause problems for European imperialists and weaken their stability. They are an indication of the general crisis of imperialism, and they are poor people who are not well integrated in the imperialist countries. They are the wished and unwished, because they are over-exploited in conditions comparable to those of workers in colonial or semi-colonial countries. They are the “Irish” of Europe.

– That is why Ursula von der Leyen says: The better the legal migration is done, the more strictly you could act with irregular migration. They need to divide those who request to be admitted as refugees or migrants in the EU, to select those who are useful or are more suitable for the production and reproduction of the workforce. In imperialist countries there is an aging population that goes together with the decrease of births.

– Furthermore, the president, with her previous statements, applies the imperialist principle of divide and rule, when she seeks to present as truth the existence of two classes of legal migrants: the legal and the “irregular” ones, she says so to try to avoid the use of “illegal”. To try to divide the front of the millions of people who are against the repression of migrants applied by the EU. Trying to present its anti-immigration policy and ignorance of formal law through its application as favorable to the exercise of such right but regulated, this is therefore according to the arbitrary power of whoever has the authority to allow or prevent its right.

– Germany is the country that most advocates this EU policy, because according to official statements it needs at least half a million immigrants annually until the middle of this century, to maintain the functioning of the different sectors of the economy and return salaries later in the form of pensions to retirees.

– The economy of imperialist States needs the labor force of immigrants and their descendants; but as a cheap labor force and with fewer rights than the rest of the workers. All “anti-discrimination” laws are the recognition of this discrimination and inequality of rights. This can be seen in the work quotas for women, disabled people, young people and migrants.

– The imperialists encourage class division between German and foreign workers as expressed in its collusion and electoral content for the replacement of reactionary authorities and to make the State and bourgeois law more reactionary.

– The imperialists need migrants and use them as mercenary troops in the complex series of wars in which imperialism is sinking. But these same migrants or their children, after serving in these wars of the imperialist masters, they will turn the weapons they have received against those who rule.

– For us, the other and main aspect of the issue is that this deep and broad mass will grow more and more, not only in the imperialist countries of the world.

The signs of the collapse of imperialism can be seen in these massive migrations, the collapse of the different imperialist countries, just as happened with the empires since ancient times. Let us remember the migrations of peoples towards the borders of the Roman Empire and how these migrations ended with this Empire.

We reaffirm our conviction that the large population movements of oppressed nations towards imperialist countries, has to do, therefore, with the three contradictions of the current world. The development of the main contradiction is what determines the ups and downs in migration flows, as well as the crisis in which the oppressed countries are struggling. In these oppressed countries, on the basis of semi-feudality and imperialist oppression, a bureaucratic capitalism develops subjected to the needs of imperialism. It is, therefore, an expression of the greatest parasitism or decomposition of imperialism, a sick and dying father, and of his son, bureaucratic capitalism, a sick and dying son.

– The different European imperialists (in collusion and contention), in this case, are very aware of how the transfer large masses of “barbarians” within the borders and on the borders of the Roman Empire, in the midst of full decadence, put an end to the Western Roman Empire with the capture of Rome.

In