Thank you to Parliamentary Secretary Julia Farrugia Portelli for explaining that life is all about money and wealth accumulation. Period.

There are no words, really, for the absolutely shocking reply that the parliamentary secretary gave in response to concerned citizens regarding the expected deportation of children from Malta merely because their parents do not, apparently, tick the income criteria that the government holds so dear.

Let’s just analyse this decision carefully. Identity Malta has stated that these “mostly Serbian parents” do not satisfy the financial requirements for third country nationals, and that, consequently, their children can no longer stay in Malta. The policy “requires expatriate workers to earn a minimum of €19,000 a year, as well as €3,800 extra for each child”.

First, let us consider that the figure of €19,000 a year (alone) is at least twice the minimum wage, which currently stands at €9,144 per year and is the income of many Maltese families. Are we finally admitting, dear government, that a minimum wage in Malta is not enough to live on?

Do we have it finally spelt out for us that the government chooses to put business profit above ensuring a decent living wage for the citizens it is elected to serve?

The only thing that matters to our government is money

There are more things to consider. Let us ignore the nationalistic undertones of the above statement, where the mere fact of being born elsewhere means you need to earn more than what many Maltese families earn in order to justify your being there.

Let us put aside for one second that it is incredibly patronising when a government dictates that ‘in order to avoid poverty’, the cost of living for a child in Malta would amount to €3,800 per child.

All these shocking figures are worth considering, but what I encourage fellow readers to do here is consider the far more important things at hand.

Tell me, PS Farrugia Portelli – how do you measure the cost of the friendships these children have built with their peers at school?

How, pray, do you put a price on the prospect of familiarity with one’s environment, or the cost of having a cultural background? What about the cost of growing up with the establishment of values, or the sheer benefit of having a routine in a day – going to school, having lunch, meeting friends, doing daily activities – all done, frankly, without worrying over how much it would cost you out of the €3,800 minimum budget required to live a child’s life?

How, also, should we value the joy of being a parent with children beside you? Or, indeed, the cost of having one’s parents nearby? Has this been measured in monetary terms? How are we to measure the cost of the message we are giving to Maltese children in their schools – that if their parents don’t earn enough, they are considered lesser people, not worthy of living here?

Are the parents ‘irresponsible’ for having children without earning the amount of money dictated by the government? Why, also, should we separate children from their parents? How should we measure the cost of parent-child separation as opposed to the benefit of keeping them together?

The sheer lack of compassion, empathy or understanding of our government when it comes to people’s livelihoods is clear everywhere: overdevelopment, road-widening, tree-chopping, rampant pollution, blatant corruption at the highest positions of power – all this is evident as the government keeps worshipping its almighty GDP god.

But to read what the parliamentary secretary states – and I quote – “My heart goes out for every child, but there are some families of four who, after subtracting rent and NI from their salary, would end up with €150 a month” only tells us one thing: that the only thing that matters to our government is money.

Money, it seems, is the measure of all joy in life, all that we should aim for. Anything else pales in comparison. Well-being? That’s for the losers. Social arguments don’t matter. Financial poverty is the worst of nightmares for our government; in their logic, therefore, ‘It is in their best interest’ to separate children from parents who do have enough income, apparently.

How much poorer indeed, then, is a person who cannot measure the worth of a life through any other means. How pitiable it is to view the worth and value of a life through financial gain and the measuring of wealth. How we have failed, as a nation, when we put regulations above the well-being of its most vulnerable people.

It goes without saying that Malta has to decide whether a child’s safety and upbringing matters more than a parents’ income, or whether ‘avoiding [financial] poverty at all costs’ is more important that a child’s psychological well-being.

We have a choice to make – whether to value a person in terms of annual income, or whether to place the human first. Good moral choices require us to prioritise the latter. The former is for the heartless.

 

John Paul Cauchi is a PhD student studying in Australia.

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