European leaders speak out on “legitimate” problem of illegal immigration: “Must be stopped”

UNITED NATIONS, New York – UNITED NATIONS, New York – European officials attending the United Nations high-level week told Fox News Digital the need to crack down on illegal or “irregular” immigration and touted success with tough guidelines as members of the bloc continue to seek agreements to secure the continent.

“There are numerous agreements with the countries of North Africa to reduce illegal immigration,” said Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. “We are for legal immigration, but agreement with it is the key to reducing illegal immigration.”

“We fight crime because the traffickers are the same drug and arms traffickers,” he added. “To do this we have to fight crime. Fighting crime is also a very important tool to reduce illegal immigration.”

Europe is experiencing significant migration from North Africa and parts of the Middle East, culminating in a refugee crisis between 2015 and 2016 in which countries such as Germany struggled to cope with the scale of immigration.

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There has been another increase over the past year, with the European Union’s asylum agency noting that October 2023 saw the largest increase in seven years and comparing this to levels during the previous refugee crisis.

To combat this, countries have adopted local immigration policies, while the European Union has drawn up agreements with countries such as Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. The Russian invasion of Ukraine added to these pressures, displacing some 4.4 million people who sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Germany and Italy received the most asylum applications – around 930,000 asylum seekers are waiting for a decision in the first instance until the end of May 2024. Italy’s right-wing government introduced a series of immigration reforms to deal with the influx, including an 18-month prison term and new centers to house asylum seekers.

The island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island, receives thousands of migrants from Tunisia every month. New processing centers are struggling to keep up with demand. One worker described the situation as “complex” last year.

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No one understands the complexity of the immigration issue better than Hungary, which remains mired in a legal battle over its own policies: The European Court of Justice in June fined Hungary up to 200 million euros for violating the bloc’s asylum rules, plus an additional 1 million euros each Day.

Hungary also this month began exploring legal options to force the EU’s executive commission to pay the costs of enforcing the European Union’s Schengen (or free movement) area.

Migrants from Tunisia and Libya arrive on the island of Lampedusa on August 1, 2020, aboard an Italian Coast Guard boat. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images)

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto argued that his country’s approach has been met with backlash since the ruling Fidesz party came to power 14 years ago, arguing that Brussels is ultimately targeting migration compared to the various countries that make up the bloc .

“We completely disagree with Brussels and, frankly, have no intention of pleasing Brussels,” Szijjarto said. “We have no intention of pleasing the liberal mainstream. We have only one intention: to satisfy the Hungarian people.”

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“I do believe that Brussels and some member states of the European Union as well as some European politicians have a very clear responsibility in relation to the migration crisis, even in the recent past, because Brussels has pursued a pro-migration policy.” Politics, and it is absolutely insoluble , if you look at how they talk about this whole phenomenon,” Szijjarto said.

“They say that migration needs to be managed – no, migration needs to be stopped, and as long as you manage migration, that means you support migration, you encourage it, you encourage people to leave their homes,” Szijjarto continued. “This is something we cannot support and cannot tolerate.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto (right) meets with Slovenian Environment Minister Bojan Kumer in Budapest, Hungary, on October 4, 2023. (Attila Kovacs/MTI via AP)

“Our position is very good: migration must be stopped,” he added. “In other words, every person in the world, every human being, must be given the right to a safe and secure life where he or she has lived, and that means not encouraging people to take to the streets “But everyone’s living conditions should be guaranteed so that they can live where they were born.”

The challenge remains how to limit this migration if the entire bloc allows freedom of movement between members. Germany has recently tried to address this problem by introducing its own hard borders, which some experts say could lead to a “chain reaction” across the continent, according to DW.

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Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky acknowledged the issue was a “difficult question” due to the balance between free movement within the union and the need for stronger external borders, saying it “puts a lot of pressure on us.”

“I think it is a clear sign that Europe has lost its ability to project geopolitical power, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, because we are fundamentally unable to take any measures to stop this irregular migration to stop,” Lipavsky said.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul attend a North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels, Belgium, April 4, 2024. (Reuters/Johanna Geron/Pool)

“If there is someone in Europe who actually has no right to asylum, there are no real mechanisms for our population, for example,” he added. “So they definitely have to try harder.”

Lipavsky praised Germany’s decision to adopt stricter migration policies, saying it was “important for Europe” that the country had moved “a little bit” towards the stricter policies of countries like the Czech Republic.

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Leaders have been eagerly seeking solutions to the immigration crisis as the issue remains a central factor in elections: earlier this year, right-wing parties made surprising gains in the European Parliament, with many managing to add some members to the governing body.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis admitted that while he considers the rise in right-wing support to be a shock to the system rather than a symptom of a growing movement, the results suggest that “the population is very concerned” when it comes to certain “legitimate “ Topics, including migration.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis attends the NATO 75th Anniversary Summit in Washington, DC on July 11, 2024. (Reuters/Yves Herman/File)

“The problem is protecting Europe’s external borders,” said Landsbergis. “When we are faced with instrumentalized migration, where Lukashenko began bringing thousands of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to our borders, basically pushing people into the European Union as a tool – to put political pressure on us “Because he doesn’t like our policies and other things – we follow the rules.”

Lithuania, along with Poland and Latvia, combated the armed influx of migrants from Belarus in 2021 by building a roughly 370-mile-long steel wall with barbed wire that is “electronically controlled.”

Landsbergis claimed the border is “probably one of the better controlled borders within the EU’s external borders”, which includes border guards and increased resources, after “the whole country… shifted gears”.

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“This is a problem and we have … a responsibility to deal with the problem,” he said. “The easiest thing is to let people in – most of the time they want to go to the Netherlands, they want to reach Sweden, they want to reach Germany… and you say: OK, it’s impossible for me to go to the border.” We didn’t do that.”

“We guard the border, follow the rules, and I think we are doing quite well so that the pressure from the border on Lithuania is now minimal.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.