What was Italy's Immigration Debate in 2018 about?

Italy is left alone to shoulder the large amount of immigrants coming in

Question: What was Italy's Immigration Debate in 2018 about?
Position‹3 of 3: Italy's immigration debate was about halting immigration
Argument1 of 2›: Italy is left alone to shoulder the large amount of immigrants coming in

"The European Union is doing nothing to help us." Italy has been struggling to take in the large amount of immigration from other countries. It would be of some help if neighboring cities and countries would lessen their immigration laws and take in more immigrants.

The argument

At the centre of Italy's 2018 debate was a rule about geography. Under the Dublin Treaty, responsibility for a refugee falls on the country in which they first land. For a union bordered to the south by the Mediterranean, that allocation is not neutral: people crossing by sea arrive where the sea delivers them, which means the states on that coastline — Italy among the most exposed — absorb the overwhelming share of arrivals while members further north receive few and are obliged to receive none. The grievance this produced was less about immigration as such than about the distribution of its burden. Those making the argument held that Italy had not chosen its position on the map and had never agreed to carry a European responsibility alone, yet the treaty had the effect of converting an accident of coastline into a permanent and unequal obligation. Appeals for relocation and shared quotas had not changed the arrangement, which left Italy bearing costs the union as a whole had declined to share. From that reading a particular strategy followed. If the rule could not be renegotiated by appeal, it could be made unworkable by refusal. Greece was cited as the example: strict anti-immigrant policies on the part of a frontline state, on this account, shift the problem rather than absorbing it, and a frontline state that stops absorbing forces the rest of the union to confront a situation it has been able to ignore. Proponents argued that Italy should do the same — close the route, decline the burden, and oblige other members to act. This is why the debate took the shape it did. The demand to halt immigration was advanced not only as a position on who should enter the country but as leverage within the European Union, directed at a treaty its advocates regarded as fundamentally unfair to the states on the frontier.

Context

This argument is supported by far-right and moderate-right parties, and by some Christian groups

Premises

[P1]The Dublin Treaty requires the country where a refugee lands to care for them, forcing Mediterranean-bordering nations like Italy to handle the majority. [P2] Following Greece's strict anti-immigrant policies would pressure other EU members to share the burden. [C] Therefore, because Italy is left alone to shoulder the large influx, its 2018 immigration debate was about halting immigration.

Counter-arguments

If all the towns and cities in Italy respected the standards disposed by the last government (25 immigrants x 1000 inhabitants) there would be room for everybody. The majority of towns refuse to take immigrants, but doing so they force bigger cities to welcome a greater number of people. Many EU nations actually refuse to welcome refugees, but their governments are strong allies of those who denounce this situation (e.g: Viktor Orban has been praised by both Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni).

Rejecting the premises

It wouldn't be necessary if Italy insisted on the other nationalist governments to take in a fair number of immigrants, instead of supporting them.