National conference on irregular immigration

The coverage by The Times of the national conference on irregular immigration left out many important matters. I want to bring the following observations to the attention of readers.

The importance of assuring the well-being of immigrants in open centres cannot be overestimated. Included in the agenda that was sent to the participants some weeks before the conference was a two-hour workshop entitled Open Centres And Integration. In the agenda handed to the participants at the conference this workshop was replaced by another workshop entitled Minor Immigrants, Accompanied And Not Accompanied By Family Members. By which standard did the organisers make this change?

The conference included another two-hour workshop entitled Coordination Of Law Enforcement Agencies And Security Issues. A further 30 minutes were dedicated to the presentation of a workshop report by the workshop chairman Martin Scicluna. During this presentation, although he acknowledged that during two hours all that could be done was a brain-storming exercise rather than presenting the various, possibly opposing, contributions of the workshop participants, Mr Scicluna presented a report of what he considered to be a balanced policy. This report was eventually referred to as the Scicluna Report, which begs the question: Did the workshop report present the views of the participants or those of the chairman?

With respect to the automatic detention of immigrants, according to its Seventh General Report, the European committee for the prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (CPT) considers this approach to be fundamentally flawed even if the conditions of detention are adequate, as a prison is by definition not a suitable place in which to detain someone who is neither convicted nor suspected of a criminal offence.

Most of the trauma that the immigrants go through does not come from finding themselves in Malta instead of to Italy or from meeting people of a different culture, as the policy document suggests. After a life-threatening journey instead of finding people who help them they find people who lock them up. This kind of treatment makes them feel insecure and it is this insecurity that is the major cause of trauma. The most traumatic is their fear of being deported.

Although 53 per cent of applicants are granted refugee or humanitarian protection status, only about five per cent get a refugee status. While those with a refugee status have a number of legally defined rights, such as the entitlement to a residence permit and to receive state health care, those with humanitarian protection have only a special leave to remain in Malta. This means that the vast majority of the 53 per cent are highly dependent on the charitable mood of the authorities.

In the UNHCR website, one finds that an expert has written that: "The modern system of refugee rights was... conceived out of enlightened self interest". This approach is not fitting to humans, let alone Christians, since they should not reason like animals.

The Maltese are morally obliged to help these people as well as they can which in practice means treating them as fellow citizens. The policy document does not put the fulfilment of this moral obligation as its fundamental objective so it is not a good basis for discussion. It is not acceptable to consider someone who is fleeing hunger as someone who is expecting too much.

Who, on the day of Judgment, when the Son of Man will send away from him all of those who did not receive him when he was a foreigner, will proclaim that this was in view of the fact that the Son of Man did not qualify for refugee status? Or who, when so much money is being wasted, would say that Malta could not afford to help?

Regarding security issues the real danger comes from the deterioration of the moral values of the locals. The Maltese cannot have moral values without having a worthy project to live and work for because a person will either live to please himself, in which case he will end up engaging in evil deeds, or live to help others. If someone lives to help others one does not put limits on how much to help them.

Regarding the use of legal procedures to determine whether to help these people or whether to send them back, one should understand that when the Jews wanted to kill Jesus they insisted they had a law and that according to that law he had to die.

During the conference, while there was a general appeal to treat immigrants as human beings and not as numbers, there was also a trend to describe whoever adopted this approach in his suggestions as impractical. Treating all immigrants as equal human beings is only as impractical as the lack of true will because when there is a will there is a way.