This article is the fifth in a series exploring Giorgia Meloni’s influence on Italy, Europe and the rest of the world

In the rolling hills north of Rome, two Indian migrants shovel hay towards a row of hungry Friesian cows.

Parwinder Singh, 21, and Beant Singh, 44, are a long way from the parched fields and scattered villages of their native India after being taken on by an Italian dairy farmer.

“At home, every family keeps a cow or two, so I am used to looking after animals,” Parwinder said in broken English.

“Italy is a very good country. Here there are opportunities, there is work – not like at home in the Punjab. I miss my parents, but I’m happy to be here.”

They are the latest beneficiaries of a policy quietly introduced by Giorgia Meloni’s government to allow nearly half a million migrants to come legally to Italy over the next three years.

The scheme appears paradoxical – at odds with Ms Meloni’s uncompromising stance against illegal migration.

She has forged controversial deals with North African nations to stop migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean, built a detention centre in Albania from which to send failed asylum seekers back to their home countries and threatened to impose a total naval blockade to stop illegal migrants from reaching Italian soil.

The strict policies have helped Ms Meloni establish herself as one of Europe’s toughest leaders when it comes to combating unauthorised migration.

And yet, her coalition government has decided to let in almost 500,000 non-EU migrants.

Why? Because Italy’s demographic crisis that has led to labour shortages. “It’s quintessential Meloni,” said one expert, pointing to how she is very tough on unauthorised migrants but practical enough to realise Italy needs migrants if they come through legal channels.

Migrants such as Parwinder Singh have benefited from the Italian prime minister’s pragmatic approach.

He arrived in Italy a few months ago to work on Dante Picotti’s farm, where 220 cows produce 3,500l of milk each day that is used to make the famous “fior di latte” cheese.

Parwinder said he felt curiously at home in the rural property, which lies among green hills and woodland near a volcanic lake, Lago di Bracciano, an hour’s drive north of Rome.

He has been taught how the farm works by Beant Singh, a fellow Punjabi who lives on the property with his 35-year-old wife and their 9-year-old son.

Their employer, Mr Picotti, is thrilled with Ms Meloni’s policy – as are employers across Italy’s sectors struggling with labour shortages, from agriculture to tourism.

“Young Italians don’t want to do this work,” Mr Picotti said. “They’re too mollycoddled. They stay at home until they are in their thirties, having their meals cooked and their laundry done for them.

“The Indians, by contrast, are serious people. They work hard, they are diligent, they are respectful. If you ask them to turn up for work at 6am, they turn up at 6am on the dot – not 6.30am. They never get angry with the animals. They always stay calm – that’s important for milk-producing cows.”

Under the Meloni legal migration scheme, Mr Picotti has now requested the services of a third Indian worker who he hopes will arrive by April.

“The government has understood that there’s a need for these foreign workers. And they are streamlining the whole process of allowing them to come into the country. They have made it faster and easier,” Mr Picotti said.

Over the next three years, Ms Meloni’s conservative coalition will admit as many as 497,550 non-EU migrants in an attempt to address labour shortages and Italy’s shrinking population.

It is the second such tranche of legal migrants – the government issued 450,000 permits between 2023 and 2025.

Many of the migrants will be assigned to seasonal farming work and will receive nine-month visas. In theory, they must return home once the visas expire.

There is a way, however, in which they can apply for the nine-month visa to be extended indefinitely.

“That’s what we need because it doesn’t make sense to have a worker arrive and give him all the training he needs, only for him to have to leave the country and go home,” said Mr Picotti, whose family has owned the farm since the 1960s.

Italy’s ageing population and declining birth rate are behind the government’s policy of inviting hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country.

In 2024, Italy registered 281,000 more deaths than births and the population fell by 37,000 to 58.93 million, continuing a long-term trend.

The policy is aimed at “responding to the needs of business”, Ms Meloni’s administration said when it announced the quotas for 2026-2028.

“The government will continue with determination to allow legal migration channels, benefiting important sectors of our economy,” Matteo Piantedosi, the interior minister, said.

While legal migrants are welcomed with open arms, the government is determined to crack down on irregular arrivals coming by boat.

The coalition is trying to speed up the pace of repatriations and clamp down on the activities of NGOs that rescue migrants in the Mediterranean.

Earlier this month, the government pushed through legislation that would allow the imposition of a naval blockade to ban boats from entering Italian waters and reaching Italian ports.

Such a blockade would be allowed in cases of “serious threat to public order or national security” or in the event of “exceptional migratory pressure”, the government said, as it unveiled a range of measures to further tighten migration rules.

Humanitarian organisations say such a policy would violate international law and rescue conventions, but the coalition has dismissed their concerns.

Paradoxical policies

Federico Santi, a political and economic analyst with Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy, said it was “quintessentially Meloni” to have such paradoxical policies.

“She takes a very strong, high-line position in public but a much more pragmatic and sensible position when you carefully look at her policies,” he said.

“The government would say that they are not against migration per se, but illegal migration. For a country with Italy’s demographics, attracting more migrants is a necessity.

Mr Santi added: “The government has been trying to support families with policies like more state-run nurseries and parental leave to encourage the birth rate, but it has not been particularly successful so far. So they need migrants.”

Prof Erik Jones, a political economist and expert on Italy, said Ms Meloni had mastered the art of talking about migration in “two different registers”.

“She can hit the high register, taking a hard line on migrant boats coming from north Africa, saying that Italy doesn’t want them, talking about security implications – that is red meat for her base,” said Prof Jones, the director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence.

“But she also strikes a medium register, which is more interesting. She needs to win over the business community, especially in the north – people like the farmers of the Po Valley who need migrant labour.

“Politically, she can talk tough on migration. But economically, she’s much more pragmatic.”

Mattei Plan

The prime minister’s embrace of legal migration goes hand in hand with a push by her government to encourage development and prosperity in Africa, the source of so many migrants and refugees who try to reach Europe.

The partnership with Africa, known as the Mattei Plan, was launched by Ms Meloni in 2024 and consists of providing grants, credits and other financial assistance to a range of African nations, including Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast. It is aimed at promoting investment-led co-operation rather than traditional aid.

At an Italy-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in February, Ms Meloni told African heads of state: “We want to build things together. We want to be more consistent with the needs of the countries involved.”

Since its inception, the Mattei Plan has launched or advanced around 100 projects in crucial sectors, including energy and climate transition, agriculture and food security, physical and digital infrastructure, healthcare and water, according to the Italian government.

The objective is to help convince young Africans to stay at home and make their countries more prosperous.

Italy aspires to be “a bridge between Europe and Africa”, Ms Meloni told the summit in Ethiopia.

The prime minister added that she wanted “to guarantee the men and women of this continent a freedom often denied: the freedom to choose to remain in their country, to contribute to its growth without being forced to abandon it, often paying unscrupulous traffickers to risk their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean”.

Training, employment and educational opportunities need to be offered to “guarantee the right not to emigrate”, she said.

The day before Ms Meloni landed in Addis Ababa, her cabinet had signed off on her clampdown on NGO rescue boats and the naval blockade measures. Rescue teams found to flout the law would face fines of up to €50,000 (£43,000) and in the case of repeated violations, have their boats confiscated.

Italy’s centre-Left opposition criticised the bill, which still requires approval by both houses of parliament.

“A repressive approach will [not] solve the issue, nor the misguided idea that a vast, structural and epoch-defining phenomenon can be addressed by building walls, erecting barbed wire or imposing naval blockades,” said Peppe De Cristofaro, a senator with the Greens and Left Alliance party.

Since coming to power in 2022, Ms Meloni has dragged the EU to the Right on migration.

She worked closely with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, on a deal that gave Tunisia financial aid in exchange for stopping migrant boats from departing its beaches for Italy.

Mrs Von der Leyen has praised Ms Meloni’s building of offshore migrant processing facilities in Albania as a “model” of “out-of-the-box thinking”.

Margaritis Schinas, a former European Commission vice-president who was responsible for co-ordinating EU migration policy until 2024, told The Telegraph: “On migration, she has shown a clear understanding that solutions require leverage, alliances, and EU-level co-ordination.

“I shall always be grateful to her for her unwavering support to the EU Pact for Migration [which was] finally adopted last year after many failed past attempts.

“In practice, she has often behaved more responsibly on European and international issues than some leaders who brand themselves as centrist.”

Manfred Weber, the leader of the centre-Right European People’s Party, said the Albania migrant centre model was “the future”.

“We have a problem sending people back home. That is fuelling the business model of these people smugglers and we have to stop this,” he told The Telegraph.

There are some figures on the European hard-Right who believe that Ms Meloni, once seen as a post-fascist firebrand, has sold out to Brussels by going mainstream.

Those concerns are particularly acute among the parties that make up the sovereigntist Patriots for Europe political grouping in the European Parliament, including Italy’s League party, the Freedom Party of Austria and France’s National Rally.

Frank Furedi, the executive director of MCC Brussels, a think-tank associated with Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, said: “She’s trying to prove you can be tough on migration without blowing up Brussels. The question in Patriot circles is whether that balance delivers results – or dilutes the mission.

“Domestically she performs as a nationalist; in Brussels she speaks like a conventional conservative. The tension between those two roles defines her premiership.”

There is a “lot of choreography” in the Italian premier’s migration policy, he said. “When the global elite meet in Munich, she’s announcing partnerships with central African countries. It sounds strategic – but on the ground in Italy, people don’t see the difference,” said Mr Furedi.

He added: “Her formula is dual track: deterrence at sea, development in Africa, and controlled legal pathways. It’s an attempt to square sovereignty with pragmatism.

“Opening legal routes while promising tougher controls is politically sophisticated – but it creates confusion among hardliners who want clarity, not calibration.”

Ms Meloni has succeeded in reducing the number of migrant boat arrivals since coming to power in 2022, striking deals with transit countries such as Tunisia.

Between 2023 and 2024, Italy cut the total number of sea arrivals by 58 per cent, from 157,650 to around 66,441.

It was the seventh biggest decline among European countries, and the biggest among European countries with the largest shares of illegal migrants.

In Germany, the decrease was just 5.5 per cent, in Spain it was 6.8 per cent, while in France and the UK, the total increased by 19.5 per cent and 19 per cent respectively.

In Cyprus, small boat arrivals decreased by 39 per cent. In Greece, they increased by 31 per cent and in Spain they increased by 11.9 per cent.

The total number of sea crossings to Italy in January this year is the lowest figure for the month recorded in the past five years. In comparison, Britain’s small boat arrivals increased by 25.1 per cent.

‘Boriswave’ similarities

Ms Meloni’s legal migration routes take up half of all work permits in Italy. The number is lower than a 2008-2010 peak and has been decreasing, but there are similarities to the “Boriswave” of legal immigrants to Britain after Brexit.

Boris Johnson replaced EU freedom of movement rules with an Australian style points system for both EU and non-EU citizens in 2021, in an effort to fulfil the Leave campaign’s promise to take back control of Britain’s borders.

EU immigration duly fell but there were record levels of migration overall, peaking at 764,000 in 2022 and 685,000 in 2023.

This was driven by increased non-EU migration after various sectors such as healthcare and agriculture were identified as in need of immigrant labour.

There were special incentives for foreign carers and a temporary seasonal workers’ legal route opened after post-Brexit labour shortages of EU workers led to some crops rotting in the fields.

Last September, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, vowed to reverse the Boriswave.

He said it was nothing any Brexit or Conservative voter had ever wanted and added that the surge in all immigration since 2019 was the “greatest betrayal of democratic wishes” in living memory.

‘Part of the family’

While irregular migrants receive an increasingly frosty reception in Italy, migrants arriving through legal channels are welcomed.

“It’s like being part of a family. The farmer and his wife are always ready to help us if we need something,” said Parwinder of his work on the dairy farm.

As the Indians set to work hosing down a bright red telehandler vehicle, cleaning it of cow manure and mud, their boss looked on.

“I need these guys. I am 62 years old – there is no way I could run the farm on my own,” said Mr Picotti.

“If they were not here to help me, I would have to close down the farm. I have faith in them. And they have faith in me.”