The cost of compassion

The editorial on illegal immigrants, (The Need For Compassion, February 24) was right in emphasising compassion rather than Malta's so-called international legal obligations, as some NGOs used to do in the recent past. Emphasis on the law was, to say the least, cynical when Malta is the victim of illegalities, especially by criminal organisations of traffickers in human beings who ply their trade from the Libyan coast.

However, the editorial ignored the cost of compassion. Admittedly the government has been very coy in giving figures: We get partial figures from one ministry for a certain period and from another one for a different period. But the cost of illegal immigrants is now spread throughout the administration, including not just the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs, but also the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Family and Social Solidarity Ministry, not to mention the Ministry of Finance.

In a report on the visit of the House of Representatives' Standing Committee on Foreign and European Affairs to Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (May 28-June 7, 2006), we read that the Maltese side explained that "The government of Malta is using about one per cent of its budget... to cope with the current situation" of illegal immigration. That works out at about Lm10 million a year. In other words, an average Maltese family of four persons contributes about Lm100 a year to the country's effort to cope with a problem that has hit us from abroad.

In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare writes that "the quality of mercy is not strained". However, I think the Maltese government is straining our compassion by making us pay a significant sum without as much as informing us of the details, let alone asking for our consent. Is it too much to expect more transparency on the matter?