Europeans will give refugees a warmer welcome if they know that illegal migrants will be deported, Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano said on Thursday.
"European citizens can understand and accept the arrival of refugees if in exchange there is the repatriation of those people who arrive without any right to be here, " Alfano told reporters in Brussels.
Alfano's comments came after the European Union's heads of state and government on Thursday a approved a uniform travel document aimed at speeding up the repatriation of failed asylum seekers and those who are no longer entitled to international protection.
Less than 40 percent of people whose asylum applications are rejected are currently returned to their homelands, often because they did not have standardised documents that met the necessary security criteria.
