Seventy percent of an estimated 37,000 migrants who landed on the Italian coasts in 2008 applied for asylum, the head of the Italian Council for Refugees said on Wednesday.
Christopher Hein told Vatican Radio that of those who applied, a third obtained asylum in Italy.
Hein, who recently visited migrant holding centres in Libya, blamed the immigration emergency in the Mediterranean on the European Union's Schengen system.
''The fact that so many Africans pay criminal organisations to take them to Europe is the consequence of Europe's Schengen system which means that no non-EU citizen and particulary Africans, can legally reach Italy or the rest of the Union since no one gives them a visa''.
