Editorial | Wednesday, 15 October 2008

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Sending the wrong message

Last week the Emigrants’ Commission issued a statement reacting to the Migration Pact, and the inclusion of a “burden sharing” agreement with the European Union.
At face value, the general thrust of the Commission’s statement is at best unclear. Wading through a plethora of facts and figures – some of which, as shall be seen, appear to be based on miscalculations – the impression one gets is an attempt to reduce the immigration issue to a series of statistics.
Coming from a Church commission, this approach to the issue can only raise eyebrows. Granted, it would be naive to expect an issue of such complexity, with all its political, economic and social ramifications, to be dealt with only from the perspective of the asylum seekers themselves. But with its insistence on raw statistics, the Emigrants’ Commission statement betrays a lack of sensitivity to the human dimension that would be more appropriate for a far right-wing political movement.
But this surprising perspective pales into insignificance compared to the general message, which appears to be based almost entirely on flawed logic and very elementary mathematical mistakes.
Among other things, the Commission claims that this year’s influx of irregular immigrants “exceeded the Maltese birth rate” for the first time in history; an astonishing revelation, to which the following addendum was added: “Nowhere in the world, nowhere has such a thing happened.”
On this latter detail the Commission is absolutely correct. Nowhere has such a thing occurred... not even Malta. The reason for this is that the Emigrants’ Commission is entirely out of its reckoning, and its gross mistake must be rectified before it does any further damage. First of all, it is difficult to understand what the statement means by “birth rate”. Malta’s annual birth rate is calculated using the same formula that applies to all countries of the world: N/P x 1000, in which ‘N’ represents the number of live annual births, and ‘P’ the total population. Like nearly all of Europe, Malta’s birth rate has experienced a decline over the years; but there is no simply equivalent ratio by which the rate of immigration can be measured and compared. Even if there were, this would add nothing to our understanding of the immigration phenomenon. It would simply be an exercise in futility.
These leaves us with the likeliest possibility: i.e., that the number of immigrant arrivals each year has exceeded the number of live births. This has nothing to do with the birth rate, and more worryingly still, it has nothing to do with reality, either. In fact it is pure nonsense. Last year’s influx amounted to less than one third of the number of live births recorded by the National Statistics Office for 2007. In fact, the Emigrants’ Commission statement itself acknowledges an annual immigration influx of 1,250; the number of babies born to Maltese parents last year was over 3,800.
But despite the enormity of the mistake, many Maltese people were shocked by the revelation, which caught the popular imagination and promptly became the topic of much heated local discussion.
Coming at a time when the xenophobic right is once again flexing its muscles, such irresponsible behaviour on the part of a supposedly humanitarian NGO cannot go unquestioned.
It would only be appropriate for the emigrants’ commissioner, Mgr Philip Calleja, to issue an explanation, if not an apology for such an erroneous message.
This is not the only questionable aspect to emerge from the Commission’s statement. Departing from the premise that Malta currently hosts 40 immigrants per square kilometre – a ratio equivalent to the population density of Finland – the Commission concludes that if this burden were shared indiscriminately by all 27 EU member states, then Malta would be home to only 100 immigrants at any one time.
It is scarcely believable that such flawed thinking would emerge from a supposedly experienced organisation. The figure of 100 immigrants was reached after spreading the total number of immigrants Malta has to date admitted, over all 27 EU countries.
But this argument fails to take into consideration two basic facts about immigration.
One, it does not take into account the number of immigrants who eventually leave Malta of their own accord: either through repatriation or resettlement programmes, or simply by slipping through the immigration net once more. For obvious reasons, these immigrants should not be factored into the Commission’s calculations.
Two, the statement makes no concession at all to the fact that other European countries also have their own immigrant issues to contend with, and the numbers involved – although less overwhelming when compared to the land masses they occupy – run into the millions. From this perspective, burden sharing cannot only mean that other countries will step in to relieve Malta of its share of the responsibility. There would presumably have to be some two-way traffic involved in the affair, whereby Malta would also have to also do its bit.
Sadly, it seems that Malta’s Emigrants’ Commission has succumbed to the overwhelming popular belief that Malta is the only country in the world bearing the brunt of the immigration crisis. One has therefore to question the competence of this Commission in handling a phenomenon which it seems to scarcely even comprehend.

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