Identità should act with humanity

Identità has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently, casting doubts on whether any of its employees have read the Labour Migration Policy – and with the fanfare expected once Vision 2050 is launched, the situation merits much more attention.

Before going into specific cases involving Identità, let us bear in mind a few points.

The island currently hosts well over 100,000 foreign nationals. It is clear from unemployment figures that they are not taking Maltese jobs but rather providing a service that keeps the country functioning, whether they are highly-skilled individuals in financial services and gaming, or carers and food couriers.

The rapid rise in the expatriate population – really only a few years – has led to numerous governance gaps, from the way in which applicants can be exploited by agents and prospective employers, to their working conditions. Locals have been complaining about overpopulation and traffic but pay little heed to the dismissive and offhand way in which they are treated by authorities.

In many cases, government entities have simply not had the time to evolve in order to provide adequate assistance to them, whether we are talking about providing information in their own language, to cultural training on arrival, to tailoring forms and procedures to their specific realities.

There were two recent cases that prompted this scrutiny: one was the case of an Iranian, whose application was dismissed because of racial and ethnic discrimination. This is not an isolated case, and the Iranian in question was applying for a highly skilled job, with the police testifying that he was not “adversely known” on international security databases including Europol and Interpol.

Despite this, Identità automatically refused the application under a “blanket policy”, which the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality found was not supported by consistent reasoning or application of law. Identità seems to have rolled its eyes and promised to look into the Commission’s recommendation.

The second case was that of an Indian woman, who faces deportation because she missed the renewal deadline for her permit because of her mental health condition. In this case, the court recommended that Identità allows the woman to reapply for her job – she had apparently worked in Malta for years until now. 

It is hard to believe that Identità cannot show some humanity and discretion in how it treats people. People of flesh and blood, not names and numbers and tick boxes. From the queues outside its offices to the months required for many of its services and claims about fraud, it has hardly got a track record to be proud of. 

No one would dream of a situation where there are no rules, but as the saying goes, rules are there to be broken – by exception! Surely, when there are genuine cases, someone should be able to assess the facts and, if they are substantiated, should be able to apply some discretion?

The judge in this case, Mr Justice Laurence Mintoff, formally appealed to Identità to allow the Indian woman to reapply for her job rather than first being deported and then having to reapply. This sounds like eminent common sense.

Identità argued in court that the law should take precedence over humanitarian considerations and arguments about proportionality. Is this the faceless, inhumane approach that we aspire to? Where is the hospitality that we were once so proud of?

The truth is that Malta needs expatriates to come here as without them our economy would grind to a halt.

Each person who comes to Malta has their own story, their own sacrifices, their own compromises, their own choices. We seem to have adopted the attitude that we are doing them a favour by allowing them to come here whereas the reality is that they are the ones doing the island a favour.