Almost 800 illegal immigrants land in Italy

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Almost 800 illegal immigrants land in Italy

PALERMO, Sicily (Reuters) - Almost 800 illegal immigrants have arrived in southern Italy aboard just three boats, in one of the largest daily influxes of third world refugees that Italy has seen.

Italy believes many of the migrants seeking a better life in Europe set sail from Libya and the Italian Foreign Ministry said it had called in the Libyan ambassador for talks on Monday.

Port officials said 478 migrants crammed on a 25-metre-long boat landed on the island of Lampedusa overnight -- the biggest number to arrive there on a single vessel. It was not immediately clear where the group came from.

A further 169 immigrants reached Lampedusa after daybreak on Sunday while a boat carrying 130 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia came ashore in Sicily, a naval spokesman in Palermo said.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi last month to discuss ways of stemming an upsurge of migrants, who are called "clandestini" in Italian.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had ordered Italy’s ambassador in Tripoli to urge the Libyan government to cooperate fully in the fight against human trafficking.

Officials said Lampedusa’s reception centre for immigrants was swamped after a flood of recent landings, with some 900 people crammed into a compound designed to house just 190.

The tiny tourist island lies some 125 miles southwest of Sicily and just over 60 miles north of Tunisia and has become one of the main gateways for clandestini.

Many of the new arrivals claim to be political refugees but Italy says they are mostly economic refugees and has in 2002 introduced legislation making it easier to expel the migrants.

However, many manage to avoid deportation and are rapidly absorbed into Europe’s army of illegal workers.

Italian police said half of a group of 200 immigrants who were transferred to Sicily on Saturday from Lampedusa were immediately released because there was no where to house them.

Immigration control is a hot political issue in Italy and some of Berlusconi’s allies want tough action to halt the tide.

"Urgently needed measures are necessary to put an end once and for all to this exodus which is of biblical proportions," Mario Borghezio, a leading light in the populist Northern League party, was quoted as saying by Ansa newsagency.

Italy’s European Affairs Minister, Rocco Buttiglione, who will take charge of EU immigration policy as justice and home affairs commissioner later this year, wants camps set up outside EU borders to screen migrants before allowing them to enter.

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