Meloni discovers immigration

Giorgia Meloni has discovered something truly terrifying: people can travel to Italy from Spain. 

Apparently, after the Ceuta migratory crisis, the Italian government has considered it necessary to maintain controls on travelers from Spain due to fears of migratory movements towards its territory. 

And this is where the show begins. 

Because hearing Meloni's government talk about Spain as a possible entry point for immigrants into Italy is like a man who lives next to the airport and is surprised that planes fly over. 

Italy is a country that receives immigration. It was yesterday, it is today, and it will continue to be tomorrow, even if Meloni puts a carabinieri behind every potted plant at Fiumicino airport. 

In 2025, it received around 440,000 immigrants from abroad and ended the year with a positive migratory balance of nearly 296,000 people. At the beginning of 2026, about 5.56 million foreigners resided there, approximately 9.4% of its population. 

But data has a rather unpleasant habit for populism: it doesn't shout, it doesn't wave flags, and it doesn't fit well into an electoral video. 

So it is much more profitable to manufacture a threat. 

Spain protests about controls it considers unjustified, and Meloni can appear before her electorate as the guardian of the gates of Rome. 

Everyone is happy. 

Well, everyone except Schengen, coherence, and mathematics. 

The truly amusing part —if it weren't because we are talking about something quite serious— appears when we look towards the other side of the border. 

Because while some present migratory movements as if they were some kind of apocalypse with a backpack, Italian citizens have been living, working, and forming families peacefully in Spain for years. Italy is among the European nationalities with a significant residential presence in our country. 

And I think that's great. 

Let them come. Let them work. Let them study. Let them start businesses. Let them fall in love with a Spaniard, a Spanish woman, or the waiter from the bar downstairs if they feel like it. 

That is called freedom of movement. One of those revolutionary ideas that, as far as I recall, were part of the European project. 

The problem should never be the nationality of the person crossing the border. The problem should be whether Europe has effective mechanisms to manage migratory movements. 

But that's where politics comes in.

Meloni built a good part of her political rise around a particularly tough discourse on immigration. And when you turn a complex problem into a fundamental part of your political identity, something curious happens: you need the problem to always remain on the stage.

Because saying "immigration requires international cooperation, resources, integration, border control, and common policies" fits terribly in a slogan.

Saying "we are protecting Italy" looks great in front of a camera.

And while we are performing Gladiator in the European Council version, Italy has a demographic problem that is much less cinematic.

In 2025, approximately 355,000 people were born there and about 652,000 died.

You don't need to have studied demography at Harvard to realize that the numbers don't add up.

Italy is aging. It is losing population naturally. And immigration is precisely contributing to cushioning that decline.

But of course, recognizing that an aging economy also needs foreign workers has much less epicness than announcing border controls.

The situation is even more absurd because Spain maintains that a good part of those who entered during the recent Ceuta crisis returned to Morocco and considers it unlikely that this supposed massive displacement towards Italy exists.

Even so, Rome maintains controls.

First we imagine the threat. Then we protect ourselves from it. And finally, we call a press conference to explain how well we have avoided what probably was never going to happen.

Wonderful.

But behind this little theatrical performance, there is something much more worrying.

Europe has been allowing the far-right to impose the vocabulary with which we talk about immigration for years.

We almost never talk about people anymore. We talk about flows. Waves. Avalanches. Pressure. Invasions.

As if behind every statistic there were no human beings and as if managing borders correctly were incompatible with preserving something as revolutionary as humanity.

Defending orderly immigration is not being xenophobic. Defending controlled borders is not either. States have the right—and obligation—to know who enters their territory.

But there is a huge difference between managing immigration and using immigrants as electoral props.

And that is the real debate.

Because while Meloni looks towards Spain, extremely worried about who might arrive from Ceuta, thousands of Italians live peacefully among us. 

As it should be. 

Europe should work precisely like this: citizens moving, countries cooperating, and governments jointly resolving what no single State can solve by raising an eyebrow at an airport. 

Immigration is one of the great political challenges of our time and deserves something much better than a competition between governments to show who places more controls. 

It needs a common migratory policy. It needs cooperation with countries of origin. It needs integration. It needs security. It needs resources. And, above all, it needs adults. 

Because managing immigration requires public policies, data, and international cooperation. 

To make propaganda, an airport, a camera, and a face that says the barbarians are coming is enough.