Italy’s Salvini pledges to move migrant centers to N. Africa

By COLLEEN BARRY
Associated Press

MILAN (AP) — Italy’s firebrand former interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has put migration at the center of his electoral campaign during a visit to Lampedusa. Italy’s southernmost island is the gateway for tens of thousands of migrants arriving in the country each year across the perilous central Mediterranean Sea. Salvini voiced concern that Italy’s largest migrant reception center on the island was nearing collapse, calling it “unworthy of a civilized country.”  He pledged to move screening centers for people seeking political asylum to northern Africa, in a bid to prevent economic migrants from pouring into Italy. He said just 15% of arrivals qualify as refugees.