For the record

While our Home Affairs Minister flatly dismissed my fears that terrorists could penetrate our island through the influx of illegal immigrants when I raised this subject during a recent Foreign and European Affairs Committee meeting, in the latest edition of L'Espresso, Italy's Home Affairs Minister Giuseppe Pisanu expressed his deep concern about this strong possibility.

Recently published figures show that from January 2002 to June 15 this year, inspite of being an EU country, Italian authorities expelled more than 238,000 immigrants who arrived by sea, while admitting a mere 12,000 refugees.

Italian officials have recently revealed that traffickers are coaching most illegal immigrants to lie about their situation to better their chances of seeking asylum. While many deliberately claim falsely to hail from Palestine or Iraq, officials say most sub-Saharan Africans claim to come from countries torn by civil war when it often does not happen to be the case.

In Cyprus they have found that on the basis of applications examined, 99 per cent of the cases are not genuine, with economic migrants posing as political asylum seekers.