"BTW why did Italy get hit so hard in the first place ? Migrants ? Or is the general poor hygiene they are ridiculed about often. "

Maybe this. There are a lot of Chinese in Northern Italy. They undoubtedly travel back and forth. Possibly how it got started there too.

https://www.ecnmy.org/engage/prato-chinese-stuff-look-around/

I have also seen some speculation that Chinese are unusually susceptible  to serious illness from this bug.

That might explain the massive clampdown on information coming out of China except from "official" sources once the epidemic really got going over there.

Most of the rest of the world doesn't believe that the Chinese numbers, particularly the number of deaths that they are reporting, are accurate. anyway.

I haven't seen anywhere a breakdown of deaths in Italy by ethnicity though.  It's likely we never will.

There is a lot we don't know about this bug yet.

We don't know what we don't know either.