Let’s talk about immigrants (illegal immigrants), just for a change. «Fewer are arriving because more are dying at sea» is the terse and dismissive comment of Marianna Aprile, co-host of the show In Onda on La7, together with Luca Telese. Aprile’s assertive demeanor leaves no room for doubt. She knows best. In short, Aprile’s words are final. So it is decided, the hearing is adjourned.
Now, data from the Ministry of Interior tells us that from January 1 to August 25, 2026, 18,914 illegal immigrants landed in Italy. For simplicity, let’s make it a round number: 19 thousand. In the same period (January 1-August 25) but in 2025, 41,004 irregular immigrants landed on our coasts. Here too, let’s make it a round number: 41 thousand. If mathematics is not an opinion, in the first 237 days of 2026, 22 thousand fewer immigrants landed compared to the same period in 2025.
Following Aprile’s doctrine, more than 22 thousand people would have therefore died at sea. While we will soon see that the confirmed deaths were 914. In short, if these 22 thousand people had not drowned in the Mediterranean (and the unspoken, not-too-implicit implication is that Giorgia Meloni’s government would deliberately let these desperate people die just to contain the phenomenon), then there would be no improvement.
It is not understood, in the left-wing logic, whether a potential higher number of immigrants is something to be welcomed with satisfaction or not. Or rather, it is understood. However, the answer is, it depends on who is in government.
DOUBLE STANDARD
If the right is in Palazzo Chigi, it is said that Meloni cannot contain a phenomenon that they would nonetheless welcome as positive and inevitable if Schlein or Conte were in government. They would say it’s positive that foreigners arrive willing to do jobs that Italians no longer want to do. Like picking tomatoes for three euros an hour or voting for the Democratic Party. I would say. The fact is that Fratelli d’Italia was offended. It publishes a post and finds it «curious» how «in left-wing TV lounges they try to explain the collapse of landings» by associating it with a «phantom increase in deaths at sea».
Read more Schlein, a fury against the big names of the Pd | Libero Quotidiano.it
Attached is Aprile’s video followed by the official numbers for 2022 and 2025. In 2022, 105,131 illegal immigrants landed, and the confirmed deaths were 1,417. While in 2025, 66,316 arrived with 1,330 deaths. The deaths have not increased at all.
But Aprile doubles down. And at the end of another episode, she pulls out the mortality rate, as if we were talking about an infectious disease. That is, she relates the number of deaths to the number of landings to try to emerge victorious in some way. She publishes a slide showing the number of landings, the number of deaths, and the mortality rate given by the ratio between deaths and landings. Let’s overlook a blatant statistical error related to 2024 where a mortality rate of 1.63% is reported against an actual 2.63%. It can happen. What is astonishing, however, is the argument that in 2026 the situation would have worsened because 914 people died (not 22 thousand as Aprile would have wanted to make people believe in a previous broadcast) out of 18,545 landings. A mortality rate of almost 5%. More than double compared to the previous year when deaths were 1,330.
THEY ARE PEOPLE
What is disconcerting is that when deaths are counted, they are considered in absolute terms. Not as a percentage. It is men and women who die. Not fractions. Following this bizarre way of arguing, if only one person had tried to cross the Mediterranean in 2026 and that person had died, then we would have had a 100% mortality rate. And therefore it would be an immeasurably worse situation than the current one, which sees 914 deaths (with “only” 4.93% mortality).
In the age of social media where controversies survive even after TV broadcasts, the temptation to have the last word is strong, especially if one hosts that broadcast. But if you’re wrong, the fix often ends up being worse than the problem.
