Burden sharing 'may take years'

The Malta resolution adopted by the European Parliament last week may take years to materialise, according to Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Europe regional director Jan Stuyt.

The "horrible, intolerable and frightening" conditions in Malta's detention centres, as described by a delegation of Members of the European Parliament last month, prompted the European Parliament to approve a resolution urging the EU to help its smallest member state to deal with illegal immigration.

"Though it's a good idea that Malta shares its responsibility with other countries, I'm afraid that any progress may take years," Fr Stuyt, a Brussels-based Dutch Jesuit, has warned.

In an interview with The Times while on a visit to Malta, Fr Stuyt said at least 200,000 asylum seekers are being detained in camps across the European Union, adding that the main problem concerned those who were still being processed and those not granted asylum.

Last year, around 640,000 failed to gain asylum status and were ordered to leave Europe. Yet in reality just 150,000 were put on a plane and sent back to their homeland, he said.

Detention policy in Europe is anything but harmonised, with illegal immigrants being detained indefinitely in the UK and the Netherlands, for up to 18 months in Malta and for as little as 32 days in France and 72 hours in Denmark.

Besides aiding people locked up in administrative detention, Fr Stuyt said JRS Europe was focusing on the illegal immigrants' fate following detention.

"After being released, migrants are often left in the streets with nowhere to go and nothing to do, without jobs or any access to basic health care. Often there are pimps waiting outside detention centres to hook young girls to prostitution. Sometimes there are policemen outside detention centres who take migrants to a Church centre where they know they will be taken care of," Fr Stuyt said, explaining that some countries lack structures to support migrants who have been detained.

Criticising Malta's lengthy detention, Fr Stuyt said there was no point locking up illegal immigrants for 18 months only to release them after that.

"I can see the point of detaining asylum seekers immediately after their arrival to identify the manifestly bogus migrants picking out those who need extra protection like families with children. Perhaps six working days would be enough for that," Fr Stuyt said.

While not excluding repatriation, the country's migration policy should be such that migrants are tracked down and detained before being sent back. However, they should be allowed to live in open centres and work while their case for asylum is being heard, Fr Stuyt said.

"The costs of detention are staggering and it is cheaper for the country to place people in open centres. If their application is not upheld, they can be re-arrested and sent back. France does that. I don't see why Malta can't," Fr Stuyt said.

When asked whether illegal immigration fuelled xenophobia and racism in Europe, Fr Stuyt said this was not his area of expertise, adding that the Church was all in favour of tolerance.

He quoted Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations, who recently said that respect for immigrants' human rights is also an important benefit for host countries.

Fr Stuyt quoted Mgr Migliore saying that "studies in rapidly ageing populations indicated that migrants can contribute substantially to relieving the fiscal burden on future generations".

"Europe needs migrants and that is a reality which people are very slow to realise. Europe is de facto an immigration continent and no longer an emigration place. I found it interesting that in Malta the office of the Emigrants Commission is working with immigrants. In Holland, as in Malta, we had people leaving for Australia in their thousands in the 1950s.

When I'm 80 years old, I will probably not be nursed by a blonde young man or woman born in Holland. Every migration sociologist or economist is saying this," said Fr Stuyt.

He said people often spoke negatively about immigrant groups but were able to relate to individual migrants in a perfectly humane and friendly manner.

"When migrants are grouped together they tend to be conservative. In South Africa, Dutch immigrants were defending apartheid when in Holland there was a whole movement favouring equality. But you cannot expect integration to happen in one day," Fr Stuyt said.