Overwhelming majority feel immigrants are breaking the law

The drama of illegal immigration, which is seeing thousands of Africans and Asians fleeing poverty and undertaking desperate journeys across the Mediterranean to seek a better life in Italy and other Western European countries, has been affecting Malta in a major way.

Only last Thursday, 93 African immigrants crammed aboard a 30-foot boat, landed at Cirkewwa, bringing the total of illegal immigrants arriving on our shores so far this year to over 1,000, creating enormous logistical, accommodation and other problems, and causing a strain on our already limited resources.

In the second opinion survey undertaken for The Sunday Times by Professor Mario Vassallo, the overwhelming majority of respondents - 69% - think that Malta should consider such immigrants as breaking the law. Only 27.3% disagreed with this, while 3.7% did not express an opinion.

Asked to give reasons as to why these immigrants are breaking the law, a clear majority (56.5%) said that Malta cannot afford to keep them; 36.2% simply said they were breaking the law, while other reasons (given by a very low percentage of respondents) were that otherwise Malta would be more attractive to other illegal immigrants, that it is not true that they have problems at home, that they bring bad habits with them, that they take work away from Maltese nationals, that they add to the tax burden, and that they carry diseases.

Fifty-seven point three per cent of the adult Maltese population say that they know the precise difference between an illegal immigrant and a refugee. Just over half of these - 51.7% - think that persons who end up in Malta after a boat journey should be considered in the former category, while 31.4% think they should be considered as refugees.

As many as 61.7% of the Maltese think that enough importance is being given to the problem of illegal immigrants, while 38% disagree. The same majority of respondents do not agree that illegal immigrants should be legally employed in Malta.

Another important finding of the survey is that no fewer than 70.3% have a general disdain towards certain races, and of these as many as 66.8% mentioned "Arab countries" as a group.

An overwhelming majority (91.7%) think that illegal immigrants should be treated the same way, regardless of nationality. A very small minority (6.3%) said that Malta should be careful about certain countries before accepting their nationals. Of these, over half singled out Arab countries.

The survey is carried out by telephone among a representative sample of 300 adults residing in Malta. The demographic profile of this study reproduces that of the adult population of the Maltese Islands.

Asked to comment on the survey's findings, Professor Vassallo said: "This phenomenon is seriously testing some of the best known threads of Maltese identity, as traditionally known. Maltese hospitality is proverbial, but inflows of this kind at a time when the Maltese are increasingly self-conscious of their own social and economic realities do put a strain.

"This study clearly shows that many Maltese do understand the plight of the individual immigrant, but are not sure that they want him to stay here. This is a clear case where the Maltese seem to be saying that, despite their sympathetic understanding of suffering people, they should not be forced to transfer this suffering onto themselves through constant inflows of uninvited guests."