Le Pen travelled to Lampedusa on 14 March 2011 with FN vice-president Louis Aliot and Mario Borghezio MEP (Lega Nord), meeting the island's mayor Bernardino De Rubeis (Movement for the Autonomies) and visiting a housing center for illegal immigrants. She said: "Europe can't welcome everyone... We would be pleased to take them all in our boat, but it's not big enough. We'll all go to the bottom. We would be adding one misery to another" and expressing her support to the inhabitants of Lampedusa who "have had the feeling of being completely abandoned". Around 9,000 migrants had travelled to Lampedusa by boat since protests in Tunisia began in mid-January 2011. During a press conference in Rome on 15 March 2011, she said the situation in Lampedusa showed "the helplessness of the EU" and how "each nation is more efficient at dealing with the issue", and proposed some solutions.