This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Italy has rejected a record 24,800 asylum applications in the last four months, and aid groups say hardline policies introduced by the rightwing populist government are beginning to have a devastating effect on migrants in the country.

The rejections were up 25% on the previous four months, from June to September 2018, and coincide with the bringing into law of the Salvini decree on immigration, named after the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

The decree suspends the asylum application process for individuals considered to be “socially dangerous” and also removes permission to remain for some of those denied formal refugee status but who are unable to return home.

More than 7,000 people have been refused so-called “humanitarian protection” since October. There were just 150 approvals in January, down from 2,091 in January 2018, leading to a sharp increase in the number of migrants with no legal status.

The data was released by the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), a thinktank, based on analysis of figures from the interior ministry. It found a year-on-year rise in rejected asylum applications from 17,500 between October 2017 and January 2018 to close to 25,000 between October 2018 and January 2019.

Asylum rejections from June 2018, when the coalition of the Five Star Movement and the League came to power, to September 2018 totalled 19,460, ISPI said.

“The decree will keep increasing the number of illegal immigrants in Italy,” Matteo Villa, a research fellow for the ISPI’s migration programme, told the Guardian.

“According to our estimates, there could be more than 670,000 asylum seekers who will find themselves living irregularly in Italy, partly because the government does not have the capacity to deport them.’’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deputy prime ministers Matteo Salvini (right) and Luigi Di Maio (left) in Rome this week. Photograph: Fabio Frustaci/AP

Arrivals to Italy have decreased by more than 80% since their peak. According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 23,126 people arrived in Italy in 2018, compared with 118,914 in 2017. According to UN figures, 2,458 migrants reached the country from October 2018 to January 2019, the period covered by the most recent ISPI figures.

The majority of the people whose asylum requests were denied in recent months arrived in Italy in 2017. It can take an average of 19 months for Italian authorities to respond to an asylum application.

The Italian government has promised to repatriate 500,000 people. To date it has repatriated about 500 migrants per month – fewer than the average of the previous government.

“We calculated it would take almost a century to repatriate all the migrants denied asylum,” Villa said.

Meanwhile, expulsions of migrants denied humanitarian protection have continued from reception centres around Italy. Many of those expelled are likely to become homeless.

In January more than 500 people were ousted from a refugee reception centre in Castelnuovo di Porto, a town close to Rome, in the first major eviction since the Salvini decree was brought into law.

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A further 50 were expelled last week from the Cara di Mineo reception centre in Sicily, one of the largest in Europe.

Charities said a Nigerian man who killed himself this month had recently been denied a residence permit. Prince Jerry, 25, a chemistry graduate, was continuing his studies at university having arrived from Libya on a boat two and a half years ago.

In mid-January his appeal to stay in the country was rejected and he “fell into a deep depression”, according to sources close to Jerry. He had been staying in Tortona in Piedmont at the time of his death.

Father Alex Zanotelli, a member of the Comboni missionaries in Verona, described Jerry’s death as “a state murder, the bitter fruit of the Salvini decree, which besides insecurity produces deaths”.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.