Raphael Vassallo | Sunday, 22 March 2009

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The great immigration myth

Michael Falzon – the former Labour deputy leader, not the erstwhile Nationalist WSC chairman – last Tuesday addressed parliament on the subject of “illegal immigration”.
At least, that was his declared intention. What I heard on the radio, however, sounded more like a painstakingly rehearsed attempt to confuse the entire issue beyond recognition... cramming together every single rumour, every last anecdote, and every unsubstantiated urban legend, to produce an hour’s worth of passionate, rabble-rousing gibberish (which, of course, also means it was arguably his most memorable parliamentary speech since http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kiZ6qKKat4).

But enough about the astonishing oratorical skills of the Labour Party’s chief spokesman on immigration... after all, this is the same Michael Falzon who once publicly admitted that he passed his A-levels only through the intercession of Our Lady (whose holy picture he has been carrying on his person ever since.)
No, never mind that the Labour Party appoints its most superstitious exponent to tackle Malta’s least supernatural problem. Each to his own, I say. What concerns me more is that Falzon’s speech last Tuesday (as Falzon himself point out around four dozen times) was ultimately far more in synch with what people out there are actually thinking and saying, than it was an accurate reflection of the actual problem in real terms. And apart from the obvious political conclusion to be drawn from this – i.e., that the Labour party is only interested in using immigration to broaden its own appeal among the electorate – it also suggests a far more disquieting dimension to the entire immigration debate than the well-worn accusations of “racism”.

Suddenly, it no longer looks as though the Maltese are “racist” (as Commissioner Jacques Barrot may or may not have observed this week). Suddenly, it looks a whole lot more like we have a credibility problem on our hands: that we are a country so gullible and naive, that the overwhelming majority is far happier to simply believe its own half-baked notions and private suspicions, than to actually look into the facts of the matter as they stand, and find out what’s really going on.
Which, I suppose, is why people like Michael Falzon (and pretty much every other member of parliament on both sides of the House) are only to happy to indulge: repeating other people’s largely fanciful illusions as though they were facts... and describing facts as though they were actually illusions.

A few examples. Among the few reliable facts and figures so far bandied about (among others, by Falzon) is that the number of immigrant arrivals since 2002 – when the bigger boatloads started in earnest – is nowhere near as inflated as we have to date been led to believe. When all is said and done, we are dealing with a permanent core of some 5,000 immigrants, which grows as more boatloads come in, and then diminishes as an ever-increasing number of asylum seekers are either repatriated, or slip through the net and carry on towards Europe undetected.
I don’t know about you, but personally I would think twice before rushing towards the European Commission waving my hands in panic, and demanding the suspension of ordinary norms and practices (or for that matter, declaring a ‘state of emergency’), over what the rest of Europe will no doubt classify as a large but unremarkable annual influx of migrants. And I would be especially wary of threatening the same Europe with vetoes and withheld cooperation; for let’s face it, if we bring out the big guns now, before we are even hard-pressed... what options will remain at our disposal if (some would say ‘when’) we are faced with a serious crisis for a change?

But no matter: Michael Falzon says our country cannot cope with 5,000 people... and apparently, the remaining 400,000 of us agree.
The usual argument is the above figure has to be seen in relation to Malta’s population density, which – at 1,282/km2 – is among the highest in the world. But this is a dangerous short-sighted argument, as by and large we tend to overlook the existence of smaller and far more densely populated European territories... for instance, Ceuta and Melilla on mainland Morocco: the former being 28 km2 and home to 76,000 citizens; the latter even smaller (12.5 km2) with a population of 100,000... creating a population density of 2,719.7/km2 and 3,459.2/km2 respectively.
To give an idea of the scale of immigration faced by these tiny enclaves, Melilla alone received 15,000 asylum seekers between 2003 and 2004): in other words, almost 3,000 more than Malta has admitted in total in the past six years.
And yes, it is true: both Melilla and Ceuta have a larger country (Spain) onto whose lap to unload their excess numbers. But in practice it doesn’t work that way: for if it did, it would only serve to attract even greater numbers towards northwest Africa, instead of the central Mediterranean route currently favoured by human traffickers.
So instead, Spain chose to fortify the boundaries of its African outposts, stationing hundreds of soldiers there to defend what have effectively become two maximum security prisons flying the EU flag on African soil.
(Meanwhile, it is not known exactly how many have died trying to force their way through these defences; nor, for that matter, how Spain has managed to escape the sort of censure we have been receiving for years on account of our relatively tame detention policy).

But there you have it: Malta is not the hardest hit by African migration, although few would deny we are the ones making the most noise about it. In fact, if you spent an afternoon listening to people grumbling in bars – or for that matter reading the online comments on news websites like The Times – you could easily come away thinking that Malta is the only country in the world to have an immigrant population to begin with. Never mind that all, but a few thousand of America’s 350 million inhabitants are actually descended from immigrants; or that in nearby Italy, a recent television discussion programme about “immigrazione” spent only five minutes discussing the arrivals in Lampedusa... and the remaining 55 focusing on the Albanian and Roma influx in the north.

From this perspective, I have to admit that our loud, impassioned complaints start sounding a little embarrassing... especially when we also talk about the money side of things.
As with all other immigration myths, this was lovingly repeated by Falzon in parliament... for all the world as though immigration was eating directly into all our livelihoods, and preventing us from investing funds where they are needed most... e.g., our roads. Echoing the Labour party’s official policy, and also the concerns of wider disgruntled public, Falzon suggested last Tuesday that Malta could no longer afford the “socio-economic impact” of immigration; that if it carries on any longer our children will end up begging on the streets of Brussels, while Africans take over all our big industries.
He is not the only one to labour under this illusion: in years gone by, Nationalist parliamentary secretaries like Tony Abela (mercifully an MP no longer) claimed that immigration was costing the exchequer some “Lm10 million” (€23 million) a year.
This, by the way, at a time when the annual influx was nowhere near the almost 2,000 of the past few months; and needless to add, no official breakdown was ever forthcoming for this remarkable estimate, despite repeated requests by yours truly.

I have to say, then, that it is a strange thing – nay, a positively extraordinary, dumbfounding revelation – that no sooner do we get a very clear idea of the real (as opposed to imaginary) cost of immigration, these prophets of economic doom are suddenly nowhere at hand with their precious estimates.
Thanks to Commissioner Barrot’s visit this week, we now know that in the past 27 months (which incidentally have also witnessed the highest number of immigrant landings to date) Malta has spent only €18 million out of a total of €126 million allotted so far by the EU in funding specifically for migration purposes for the 2007-2013 period.
That is considerably less than half Tony Abela’s estimate, and only a very small percentage of it came out of Malta’s coffers. The bulk was provided by the EU’s external borders fund, as well as various other EU instruments such as the European refugee fund, the returns fund, and other funds aimed mostly at integration.
I feel I ought to stress that from this total financial package, €112 million has been allocated specifically towards financing search and rescue operations (the borders fund) – which are rather expensive things – while the remaining €14 million goes towards the welfare of asylum seekers themselves... including the upkeep of open and closed detention centres.
This means that the same European Union that some of us would like to threaten, has already covered nearly all the expenses relating to immigration for the next four years... after which, the financial package will be renegotiated for the subsequent seven years, and so on ad infinitum.

Not bad, for a country that claims it “can’t afford” to install basic heating appliances for residents of closed centres; or for that matter provide decent, permanent medical facilities, without relying on the generosity of international medical charities like Medecins Sans Frontieres...

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