The government is planning to accelerate the processing of applications by asylum seekers and set free illegal immigrants whose detention drags on beyond "a reasonable time", Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg said yesterday.
The policy reforms are to be introduced in the near future but the definition of a reasonable time has not yet been established.
Dr Borg said that by reducing the number of immigrants at detention centres the conditions under which they are held would improve.
The conditions and the length of time many immigrants are detained for in Malta have recently come under fire from the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International.
Addressing an international conference held at the Old University, in Valletta as part of the Mediterranean Master's degree in human rights and democratisation, the minister said Malta came face to face with the phenomenon of illegal migration in the past 22 months.
The number of illegal immigrants who arrived in Malta last year amounted to half the annual birth rate in the country. "No fewer than 1,680 illegal immigrants landed on our shores in 21 separate landings; this year's figures are considerably less - 350 in 10 separate landings," Dr Borg said.
The minister said that with Malta being the smallest European state and the most densely populated, this dramatic influx caused a crisis situation for law enforcement agencies particularly the army and the police.
"The country was just not prepared for such an influx. A new immigration centre catering for about 100 persons was opened just a few weeks before the beginning of the arrival of these immigrants.
"Indeed, in 2001 only 100 illegal migrants, spread over 12 months, had arrived in Malta irregularly."
Dr Borg said that figures showed that the approval rate of applications in Malta hovered in the region of 50 per cent, by far one of the most positive approval rates in Europe.
He said that according to UNHCR statistics there are more than 20 million people in the world who can be described as refugees or asylum seekers.
Despite the opposition and hardship they could face, millions of emigrants left their home country each year, driven by poverty, persecution, or just the hope of a better life.
He said developments in Malta on the rights of refugees and asylum seekers had registered a dramatic improvement in the past five years.
In 1998 there was no refugee law, refugees were considered as any other foreigners for work permit purposes and the recognition or otherwise of refugee status was left in the hands of the UNHCR in Rome, entailing undue delays.
The rights of refugees were not spelt out in any legal document. Indeed, if a refugee succeeded in obtaining a work permit on conditions at par with other foreigners then, on obtaining such a permit, he was obliged to renounce his refugee status, the minister said.
Since the Refugees Act 2000 came into force in October 2001, asylum seekers had guaranteed rights such as not to be deported during the processing of applications, to free medical care and educational services, family reunification, social assistance at par with Maltese nationals and the right to work.
They had also been given the right to a travel documents in accordance with the 1951 Geneva Convention.
Fr Pierre Grech Marguerat, from the Jesuit Refugee Service, said the service calculated there were over 25 million refugees because of a slightly wider definition of the word refugee to that given by the UNHCR. There were also another 25 million internally displaced persons.
Migration, Fr Grech Marguerat said, was one of the oldest forms of globalisation. Over 500,000 women alone were annually trafficked into Europe from its eastern borders mostly to be exploited in white slavery and prostitution.
Human trafficking had proved to be a far more profitable business than drugs, yielding $5 to $10 billion a year.