When Vincent Enu and his wife Omoyena were being discharged from hospital following the birth of their youngest daughter in 2020, they were asked to pay more than €800 to be allowed to go home.
Vincent was shocked. For nearly 15 years he had paid tax and social contributions except for the last two months: “When my wife had our daughter Juliet at Mater Dei Hospital, I took my last NI contribution slip from three months before. Instead, I was asked to either present the notification of that same month or pay over €800.
“I wanted to cry. If you work and pay tax for 20 years but lose your job for two months, you are on your own.”
Of Nigerian and Cameroonian nationality, Vincent arrived in Malta in 2006. He told Times of Malta that since being released from detention, he spent 17 years working legally – at a factory, a construction company, a hotel, and a garden centre, among others, and even opened his own shop in St Paul’s Bay.
The couple’s asylum request was rejected, which means their four children – aged between three and 16 – who were born and brought up in Malta are stateless.
Vincent said he and others in his situation have done all the government asked them to do to regularise their position.
“Sometimes I think the Maltese will understand our despair as a lot of Maltese moved abroad for a better life in the 1950s and 1960s. So how come, the efforts of people who did everything asked of them by the Maltese authorities in nearly 20 years, remain unrecognised?”
Today Vincent will join a protest in Ħamrun organised by people who similarly have a rejected status. They will call for policy changes that would grant people living and working here for several years – and their children born in Malta – residency, social rights and stability.
Most people who are denied asylum are allowed to work in Malta and are obliged to pay tax and social contributions but have no access to free education. While working, they have access to healthcare but no social protection.
This means that if they are injured, taken ill, or can no longer be gainfully employed, they will not receive any social, medical or unemployment benefits. They are similarly not entitled to a pension once they reach retirement age.
“We are working hard, invested all our strength and are standing on our own two feet. We are not asking for any special treatment. We are just asking for our rights to be recognised,” Vincent said.
Sadly, some have paid with their own lives.
“Three years ago, a good friend of mine from Ghana died by suicide. He could not take it anymore,” Vincent added.
Stateless children
“My biggest fear and constant worry are our children. When one asks my children about their home or their identity, they say they are Maltese. But they cannot do everything that their Maltese friends can.
“It’s like they don’t exist and yet, they are stuck here: as a result of their statelessness, they cannot travel with their mates abroad for holiday, or to represent Malta in some competition.” Children born in Malta to parents who have been rejected asylum inherit their parents’ lack of documentation, have no social protection and are technically stateless.