Can Arizona survive the global migration that just swamped a small Italian island?

Out of the morning mist on Tuesday came the first of 120 boats plying the Mediterranean toward the tiny island of Lampedusa.

In roughly 24 hours, some 7,000 to 8,000 North African migrants would land upon the Italian island in numbers more than double its 6,000 population.

Lampedusa is a gateway for migrants hoping to resettle in continental Europe. Like the citizens in our own gateway cities of Yuma and Nogales, the people of Lampedusa are used to migrant traffic.

But this was way more than anyone could handle.

Italians blast leaders over migrant surge

The Red Cross stations built to serve as many as 400 arrivals were overwhelmed and trampled.

Italian officials were alarmed.

“When 120 boats arrive in a few hours it is no longer a chance episode, it is an act of war,” Matteo Salvini, the Italian deputy prime minister, told The Times (of London). “I am convinced that there is coordination behind this exodus.”

The Italian people blamed their prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who was elected on the promise she would stop rampant immigration, even if it took a naval blockade, reported the Washington Post.

Her rhetoric has proven empty. Italy’s 123,800 immigrant arrivals this year have doubled last year’s.

In France, Marine Chiaberto, a leader in the far-right party Reconquête!, tweeted out, “Italy is submerged, France and Europe too. Immigration threatens the balance of the continent and the survival of our civilization.”

Europe, US are experiencing similar forces

The immigrants who descended on Lampedusa largely came from sub-Saharan Africa by way of Tunisia, which, itself, has been overwhelmed with immigrants and is treating them harshly to compel them to leave.

The global south with its fast-growing population and often broken economies is pushing upward to the global north, where birth rates are low and jobs are more plentiful and better paying.

Another view: Gov. Hobbs should post guards at open border gates

The same global forces that apply pressure on Western Europe are also creating enormous stress on the United States and Arizona.

Lampedusa has lighted the imagination in Western Europe, allowing people to see very quickly what is occurring more slowly and incrementally across the continent.

Police shooting in France sparked riots

This follows rioting that broke out in France this summer after French police officers shot and killed a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent. Police said the young man had nearly run down officers in his car, but video emerged that showed the police were never in danger.

Rioting broke out in larger cities across the country.

Protesters from largely immigrant communities attacked and burned city buses, city halls, churches and historic places. In one town, protesters drove a car into the mayor’s home and injured his wife and son.

Some 45,000 police officers were needed to quell the violence.

In the United States, we have watched a large influx of Latin American immigrants and now emerging groups of African migrants cross our southern border.

Liberal US cities feeling migration pain

In fiscal 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported record-breaking migrant encounters on the Southwest border — some 2.38 million.

“In the first four months of the FY 2022, more than 8,600 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the border,” wrote 16 members of Congress, including Arizona’s Juan Ciscomani, to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“This is enough (fentanyl) to kill more than 1.9 billion people.”

Boas: East Coast snobs sound like us on the border

Border states have been bussing immigrants to New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, and Democratic mayors and citizens in those cities are beginning to complain in the way border states complain about immigration.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said the problem “will destroy New York City.”

Is Lampedusa a sign of things to come?

The Italians, led by their far-right and restrictionist prime minister, are solving the crisis in Lampedusa by relocating the migrants to Sicily and the Italian mainland, reports the German broadcast network DW.

Which poses some important questions for Republicans and Democrats in the United States:

Is Lampedusa an outlier or a harbinger of things to come?

If global upward migration continues, should we get control of it?

And finally, the most important question of all:

Even if we want to control it, can we?

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Migrants overrun an Italian island. Is it a harbinger for Arizona?