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Between January and November 2021, 59.7 thousand migrants arrived in Italy by sea. August recorded the highest number of arrivals. During 2020, instead, the number of migrants who stepped foot in Italy peaked in July at 7.1 thousand people. The largest number of people migrating to Italy weas registered in the years 2016 and 2017. In October 2016, 27.4 thousand individuals reached the Italian coasts by crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the highest monthly figure recorded in the past four years.

The main ports of arrivals

  In 2018, the main port where migrants arrived was Pozzallo, a city in Sicily, in the South of Italy. Pozzallo is in the province of Ragusa, located directly on the Mediterranean Sea. The number of migrants who set foot in Pozzallo in 2018 amounted to 3.8 thousand people. In that year, the Island of Lampedusa was the second most important harbor for the arrivals. Almost 3.5 thousand migrants arrived on this Sicilian island. Lampedusa is only about 113 kilometers (70 miles) away from Tunisia and represents an important entry port for the whole of Europe.

Asylum applications mostly denied

  In 2020, a total of 27 thousand asylum applications were registered in Italy. However, data on the examined requests show that asylum was denied in most of the cases. As a matter of fact, in 76 percent of the cases examined over 2020, applicants were not given the asylum status. Only 11 percent of migrants received the refugee status during that year, whilst another 11 percent of people were assigned a subsidiary protection.