No right to act as refugees

It seems that Maria Dolores Spiteri, in her letter Migrants Are Innocent Until Proven Guilty (November 3), has missed the meaning of one very important word in Article 31 of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. This stipulates that: "No penalties shall be imposed on persons seeking international protection coming directly from a country of persecution on account of their illegal entry..." .

As far as we know no illegal immigrants arriving in Malta come directly from a country of persecution. Most of them come here through Libya, a country at peace, with no social unrest and richer than Malta. Just this removes the reasons any immigrants have for refugee status.

Malta is not the first country they escape to from their war-ravaged countries. They have no right to act as refugees here. Only on this basis all requests should be refused. There is no reason they should leave Libya. They are not being persecuted in Libya. Once they arrive in Libya and have found safety there, then there is where they should stay.

This should be more than enough to prove that indeed these are economic immigrants, not searching for safety from persecution, which they would have already found in Libya, but searching for what they think is the Eldorado of Europe. Given the crime situation in Italy, unfortunately a great number of them get enmeshed in the criminal world.