What was Italy's Immigration Debate in 2018 about?

Illegal immigrants are "treated like modern slaves"

Question: What was Italy's Immigration Debate in 2018 about?
Position‹2 of 3›: Italy's immigration debate was about helping refugees in their own homelands
Argument‹2 of 3›: Illegal immigrants are "treated like modern slaves"

"Left wing parties and people involved in the Mafia use human rights to enslave unauthorized immigrants"

The argument

NGOs funded by George Soros, left wing parties and traffickers are all involved in a huge business that brings them huge amounts of money. They say that they care about human rights, but they are actually involved in the illegal employment of unauthorized immigrants. Those people are then forced to work in brutal conditions. Italy must say no to this by accepting only regular immigrants who can work in proper conditions and integrate.

Context

This is the most recent argument used by anti-immigration parties. It's probably the most complex argument on this subject, because on the one hand many irregular immigrants end up being employed at inhuman conditions, but on the other hand this fact is usually associated with conspiracy theories and fake news that make confrontation very difficult. Also, you can't blame immigrants for their employers' dishonesty. Although right-wing parties use this fact to support anti-immigration policies, the most active person in the fight against this phenomenon is left-wing activist Aboubakar Soumahoro, who claims that the problem can be solved by promoting integration and education, rather than changing immigration policies.

Premises

[P1]The argument holds that NGOs, traffickers and others profit from bringing unauthorised immigrants into Italy. [P2] These immigrants are then forced to work illegally in brutal conditions, like modern slaves. [P3] Italy should refuse this and instead accept only regular immigrants who can work in proper conditions and integrate. [C] Therefore, since illegal immigrants are treated like modern slaves, the debate was about helping refugees in their own homelands.

Counter-arguments

Left-wing intellectuals and artists have been denouncing the illegal employment of immigrants for years, long before the far-right parties started caring about these issues. This argument doesn't consider that left-wing parties fight for legality and integration too - just in an anti-racist way. The additional theories about Soros and NGOs fail to show a single evidence of their truth.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The counter-argument on record notes that no evidence is offered for the central allegation. The claim that non-governmental organisations, left-wing parties and traffickers operate a single coordinated business funded by a named financier is a conspiracy theory that has circulated widely without substantiation, and Italian investigations into rescue organisations in this period did not establish the collusion asserted here. [Rejecting P2] Exploitative labour conditions in Italian agriculture are documented and are not in dispute — but they are produced by the caporalato gangmaster system operating on undocumented workers already in the country. Nothing in that connects the exploitation to the organisations named in P1, and the argument supplies no link between them. [Rejecting P3] The remedy does not follow from the diagnosis. If workers are exploitable because their status leaves them outside legal protection, then refusing entry does not remove the exploitation — it determines only whether those already present can be reached by labour law. The counter adds that legality and integration have long been argued for from the left as well, so the framing of a single side owning the concern is inaccurate. [Rejecting C] The conclusion also does not match the position. An argument about conditions inside Italy is being offered as evidence that the 2018 debate concerned helping refugees in their countries of origin, which the premises never address.