Editorial | Wednesday, 04 March 2009

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Petitions that lead nowhere

Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici is currently collecting signatures for a national petition urging the government to “take concrete action” against irregular immigration... without suggesting what course of action to take.
It is about as useful an initiative as a petition against the global economic meltdown, or the recent spell of cold weather. One would think a former Prime Minister and Opposition leader would know better than to suggest that the present government – or any government, for that matter – can simply produce a magical solution to this problem simply by pulling one out of a hat.
But then again, this is hardly surprising. One could argue that most of Malta’s apparently insurmountable problems – economic, environmental, infrastructural or cultural – arise precisely from this inability or reluctance to think ahead, to substantiate one’s comments with facts, or to ever take responsibility for one’s own initiatives.
Recent weeks have seen an unprecedented surge in politicians shooting their mouths over immigration, while not suggesting anything in the way of a workable strategy. In an interview with Smash TV last week, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando even talked of a “final solution”: evidently unaware of the connotations of this expression, which was first used as a euphemism for the brutal murder of millions of Jews in Hitler’s concentration camps.
Even without this verbal gaffe (for it is obviously unlikely that the Nationalist MP made the connection intentionally) Dr Pullicino Orlando’s proposals have so far been shockingly naive and populist. He suggests “towing them out to sea” and simply leaving them there: something the rest of the civilised world would immediately identify as a crime. He also claims that proportionally, Malta’s influx would be the equivalent of more than two million immigrants entering Germany over 10 years: little realising that countries like Germany have actually admitted more than that number of immigrants over the same time period.
Dr Pullicino Orlando is no fool, and cannot therefore be serious with such harebrained nonsense. The only conclusion this newspaper can draw is that – like others in the political sphere, including Opposition leader Joseph Muscat – he is merely seizing on the public’s genuine concerns, and twisting them to his own political advantage.
Perhaps it is time to call the scaremongers’ bluff. Official statistics indicate that some 13,000 irregular immigrants have landed in Malta over the past seven years, and that the vast majority were repatriated. Of these, at least 47% have been granted some form of protection (refugee status or temporary humanitarian or subsidiary protection) and therefore enjoy a legal right to be here. Others have left of their own accord.
In reality, then, we are talking about a current immigrant population of not much more than 5, possibly 6,000 people. How, then, can we expect the European Union to take us seriously, when we describe this situation as a “crisis”, and even threaten to declare a “state of emergency”?
This is not to say that problems do not exist: but the real problems associated with irregular immigration are very different from those of the fantasy island so many of us seem to inhabit.
One of these concerns government’s policy of mandatory detention in closed centres. This policy has since been accepted as a necessary evil even by humanitarian NGOs; but from direct experience this newspaper can assert that conditions in some parts of the camps do not meet even the very barest minimum of standards required by the Charter of Human Rights.
This is not a situation we can afford to prolong. Apart from undermining our international credentials, the shocking state of detention centres also leads to regular and often violent riots; which in turn expose our Armed Forces to personal risk, and also cements the popular perception of asylum seeker as criminal or troublemaker... a vicious circle which only compounds the problem from every angle.
If the Malta government is adamant on retaining this policy, then at the very least it must ensure that a minimum standard of living conditions is met.
Outside detention, we have no idea how many of the immigrant population are currently working off the books: a serious issue, as the illegal employment of thousands of “invisible” foreigners (not only from Africa, but also from Eastern Europe and even countries like India and China) not only gives rise to exploitation, but also directly threatens Maltese jobs, at a time when the labour market is already under severe threat from global economic forces.
Lastly, we are refusing to acknowledge that part of the problem stems from ourselves: in particular, our stubborn belief that Malta is somehow immune to the geo-political vicissitudes of the world, and can therefore turn the clock back to an idyllic, pre-immigration age.
This cannot and will not happen, and only a seriously deluded individual will argue otherwise.

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