Italy, migrants complain about the bad conditions of detention

Saturday morning, Italy, Lampedusa island

About 700 illegal immigrants had broken out of the detention centre and were staging protest in town. They were complaining about the bad living conditions of the centre which is normally built to contain 850 persons but which actually grants 1,800 immigrants. Some of them had had to sleep outside because of the lack of place. The immigrants as well as the local residents also complain about the government's plans to open a new centre for Identification and Expulsion. The local residents fear "it would become a sort of prison".
Before, the landing immigrants asking for asylum were sent to the Italian mainland, but now, according to a new policy, they are kept on the island and if they don't pass the immigration checks, are sent back to their country.
In 2008, 31,700 immigrants have landed on the island (increase of 75% from 2007). They often escape from poverty and armed conflicts in Somalia or Eritrea.

Immigration is an important issue. A lot of people are fleeing overseas to escape from poverty or wars, and according to me, you can't just send them back to a certain death. It's morally inacepatble. On the other hand, I can understand that it's complicated for governments to grant everybody because the country would be overcrowed and it would lead to bad living conditions. What I'm saying here are big "clichés" in a certain way and this issue needs more details. I don't have the solution about the immigration problem, although I think if the "big powers" helped more to end conflicts (and corrupted governments) as well as economically speaking the countries of origin, people would not be willing to leave them. Indeed, it's a big and difficult task, but I think it would be possible in a certain mesure (by stopping selling weapons for example).
But to go back to the article, human rights should be respected and so good living conditions should be reached even in a detention centre. For the moment I think other centres should be built (but in another way than Italian government is doing now for example because even local residents fear it would become a sort of prison), maybe in association with "ONG" if the government alone can't afford the cost. I don't have a lot of informations or ideas about it, but that's a subject I'm going to treat (PEJ 2009), so I would complete my analysis once I returned from this manifestation.