Crimes by immigrants

Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono has brought some semblance of sanity to Malta's justice system (June 6). He lectured magistrates who habitually hand down suspended sentences on the need to be more "sensitive... to society's need to be protected from rising crime". He overturned an earlier suspended sentence handed down by a magistrate to an illegal immigrant accused of violent physical assault and attempted rape.

All too often, magistrates let off criminals, the nature of whose offence should have resulted in prison time, with a suspended sentence. The same individual's criminal record should also be endorsed accordingly; otherwise the cycle of "taking into consideration [the accused's] previous clean criminal record" would never end.

It is inevitable that among the boatloads of illegal immigrants who wash up on our shores a percentage will end up committing crimes against the very people who house, clothe and feed them. In most cases, illegal immigrants come from a culture which resents authority, and for them lawlessness as a way of life is a basic characteristic. In some cases, murder, rape and pillage are facts of life. This is a troublesome trend and it is time our government got its priorities in the right order and realised that it is placing society at risk each time an individual escapes detention, or as is the case in most of the offences, illegal immigrants are moved to an open centre. If anything, the above reinforces the need for continued detention and rapid deportation, which should be automatic if a person committed, and was convicted of, a serious crime.

Crimes have included murder, physical assault and attempted rape of a Maltese woman, domestic/spousal abuse, escape and unlawful flight, breaching airport security, illegal use of another person's passport, wilful damage to Maltese government property, numerous physical assaults on policemen and members of the AFM at detention centres - the latest being the throwing of scalding hot liquid into the face of a policeman - challenging the authority of policemen in public and refusing to obey a lawful order, as well as an arson attack on a policeman's vehicle. Within the last couple of days we have also had a report of a vehicle loaded with workmen's tools being stolen by illegal immigrants and driven in a dangerous manner.

I have a series of questions for the Home Affairs Minister. Are illegal immigrants, who have been convicted of a crime, foisted onto another unsuspecting host country with their criminal record conveniently expunged? Or are they turned loose onto an unsuspecting Maltese public? Or are they automatically deported after having served their time?