Behind closed doors

This is the million dollar question presently being asked - should illegal immigrants be detained pending their deportation? Over the last few years Malta has experienced a new phenomenon - the onslaught of thousands of illegal immigrants to our shores. This is definitely a pressing issue which justifiably has attracted the attention of all.

A few years ago parliament tried to address the problem. A law aiming at regulating the position of such people was passed by parliament, in line with international conventions on the matter. As a point of fact, today we have a tribunal which assesses claims made by foreigners in our country regarding questions of refugee status. Our country thus abides by international law and will give sanction to all those illegal foreigners who are entitled to refugee status. On the other hand, however, it will proceed with deporting all those other immigrants who would not qualify as such.

The processing of such requests, however, is no easy matter. This is made much more difficult by the fact that many of the people seeking refuge in our country dispose of their passports and other means of identification and thereby stultify such proceedings. There are in fact hundreds of immigrants here in Malta whose nationality has not yet been determined or verified and thus the authorities are put in the impossible situation of proceeding further.

In the meantime such persons are detained indefinitely. International law justly leaves it up to the host state to determine whether to keep such refuge-seekers in detention or otherwise. In fact, some countries, obviously much larger than our own and with much greater resources, after some time grant their illegal immigrants freedom of movement. In Malta this is not the case and the Minister of the Interior has over the last few months been pressurised by different groups to reconsider the government's position.

The minister responsible for home affairs, however, has recently gone on record reiterating the government's stand on the issue. The minister has stated that at least for the foreseeable future the policy of the government will remain that of detaining those illegal immigrants who for some reason or other cannot be expeditiously repatriated.

Undoubtedly, these foreign visitors in our country should be treated with the utmost humanity and compassion. These would have fled their country never capriously and usually to escape poverty and unbearable hardships. This notwithstanding, however, the question of whether they should be kept segregated or otherwise is not an easy one to answer and one can well appreciate the position successive administrations have taken.

There are two main arguments against taking too liberal an approach.

The first and most important issue to consider is the one regarding the importance of deterrence. If we allow illegal immigrants too much liberty and freedom of movement in our country this will obviously entice greater numbers to try and seek hospitality in our country, which would create disastrous economic repercussions for our country. As a point of fact, when one analyses illegal immigration from a Maltese perspective, one will realise that as a point of fact the hard stand our government has been taking over the years is in actual fact serving as an effective deterrent, at least to some degree, and fewer are inundating our shores than predicted.

On the other hand, there are practical reasons why Malta cannot open its doors to the wave of illegal immigrants which has been hitting our country. Being such a small country, already overpopulated as we are and with our limited resources, we simply cannot afford the generosity of assimilating all these people.

Thus to conclude the right approach seems to be to keep the status quo. On the other hand, we surely must try and upgrade the centres of detention, making them more hospitable and friendly. We should also seek to try and conclude treaties with our neighbouring southern countries guaranteeing the repatriation of illegal immigrants from their country of exit, which so far we have not succeeded in doing.

Dr Herrera is the Labour Party spokesman on financial and maritime services.