Deporting a Turkish student

Detaining for three days a Turkish student who arrived in Malta to study English and deporting him after first granting him a visa, is certainly not the way to enhance Malta's reputation as an English language-teaching centre.

Global competition for English language students is becoming fiercer than ever. While Britain can claim to have pioneered the concept of providing short, intensive language courses, and dominated the market for much of the past 50 years, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, are now competing more aggressively for a share of shifting and in some cases diminishing student markets.

More competition is emerging, not just from new English language teaching (ELT) country destinations, such as South Africa, but also from in-country low-cost language provision, especially in China; regional hub campuses of UK and other institutions, for example in Malaysia and Singapore; and e-learning and other Web-based delivery systems.

Latest available figures show that the world market for ELT students is over 900,000. The UK still leads the industry with 43.6 per cent market share. The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland are also among the world leaders. Malta follows with a 1.7 per cent share and South Africa is climbing up with a share of 0.9 per cent.

All these countries competing with us are working hard to boost student numbers through quality assurance linked to visa issuance. In Malta, FELTOM, the ELT school association, has been working hard for the past four years to persuade Government to introduce a specific student visa system so that it can gain a better foothold in non-European markets. As far as quality standards are concerned, FELTOM has revised standards for its own accreditation scheme to "set Malta apart from the competition".

On the whole the visa situation has improved since last year but ridiculous and harmful situations still occur in the way visas for ELT students are being processed. Visa decisions are still being taken arbitrarily by Immigration officials that defy logic and credibility.

Harming Malta

A school had two Turkish students (male and female) arrive together earlier this year with booked courses of five months. The male was given a visa for one month while she was given one for three months without either of them realising this unexplained discrepancy.

These two students assumed that they both had a three-month visa. So, after three months, they requested the necessary papers from the school to go to the Immigration Office to renew their visas, at which point they realised that the man's expired two months before. Of course they were very worried and so was the school.

They went to the Immigration Office and, sure enough, the man was told he would have to leave the country, go back to Turkey, apply for a new visa and come back. He was also assured, after the officer at the desk spoke to the school, that he would not get a deportation paper put in his passport and that he would be allowed to come back. Well, he went back to Turkey, applied for a new visa, which was issued, and he came back to Malta.

When he arrived at the airport, he was arrested as the Immigration officer who stamped his passport when he had left the week before had entered a deportation order against him. This came up when he came back to the island and he was detained, held for three days at the airport and sent back to Turkey despite FELTOM's numerous attempts to remedy the situation, even with the Office of the Prime Minister. The inspector in charge did not accept or return any of the calls from the school and everyone else they spoke to told them that only he could reverse the decision.

The Turkish student was of course wrong not to check what permit he was given on his first entry into Malta (but it is understandable that he assumed that he was given the same conditions of the woman he arrived with. However, there is a whole string of errors and inconsistencies by the authorities in this case.

Why send someone out of the country only to allow them in again? Why could things not have been sorted out properly and in a civilised manner in Malta? Why tell someone who has overstayed their visa that they will be able to come back into the country? Doesn't that detract from the authorities' credibility? Why issue a visa to someone who has overstayed or, better yet, has been deported? Why arrest and then deport someone who has a valid entry visa? Why was the inspector in charge unavailable?

This story spread like wildfire through the schools and agents. Now the Turkish agents are all very angry. The female student obviously cut her stay short and left the island that same morning that her friend was deported. These experiences obviously do not help build trust or good will towards Malta and only reinforce the belief that the Immigration authorities are arbitrary and capricious.

A zombie government

Seventeen months ago FELTOM had a meeting with Prime Minister Gonzi, Ministers Borg, Frendo and Zammit Dimech to discuss the issue of entry visas for foreign students who come to Malta to learn English.

At the meeting FELTOM explained that the ELT market is saturated in the summer months. ELT schools need to increase business in the winter months and potentially they can do this by attracting students from South America and Asia.

FELTOM is in favour of more stringent visa procedures, as long as these are clear and transparent, to ensure that applications will not be open to abuse. The ELT schools feel there is still a need for change in policy that should facilitate the process of visas and subsequently agents will have enough faith in Malta to promote it as a suitable ELT destination.

FELTOM firmly believes that Malta should introduce a student visa, as the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand have had for several years. For over a year now Government has been saying that it considers favourably this proposal to introduce a student visa. At the beginning of 2006, Government also promised FELTOM that it would discuss this recommendation "in the coming weeks". Seventeen months have passed and nothing has happened to introduce this student visa.

With such a visa, students would still have to go the Immigration Office every three months or so, just to prove that they are still attending lessons. FELTOM rightly argues that the student visa will eliminate the trouble and psychological problems that students who come to Malta for long-term courses suffer because they have to apply for extensions every three to four weeks.

The ELT sector has grown steadily in the past five years, unlike the mainstream tourist industry. In its Website, FELTOM states that in 2005, the ELT sector attracted nearly 62,000 foreign students or 9.4 per cent of the total tourist arrivals from non-English speaking countries. This amounts to 5.3 per cent of all tourist arrivals in Malta! The average length of stay is of these TEFL students totalled 17 nights, compared to the national tourist average of eight nights.

The growth rate of English language student arrivals over the last four years averages an impressive 2,500 annually, which is highly significant when compared to mainstream tourism growth rates over the same period. There was a healthy increase of 6,029 students in 2005 over the previous year. The ELT sector yields an estimated Lm34 million (€82 million), representing some six per cent of the estimated foreign earnings from tourism, well over 1,500 jobs and a good product that has found favourable approval and recognition worldwide.

In the government's 2006-2010 pre-budget paper entitled "A Better Quality of Life", the business community is encouraged to be innovative. It is Government's responsibility to ensure that the political, economic, social and health environments facilitate the creation of wealth.

Several ELT schools have invested substantially in the past few years and are eager to invest more and tap new emerging markets, which would require an entry visa to Malta, if they are somehow convinced that the authorities would support this further investment by enabling Malta to become an all-year-round ELT destination. The introduction of a student visa is urgently needed to make this happen.