Drawing parallels between Malta and Cyprus

On the whole, the institutional set-up of the adjudication process in Cyprus and Malta is similar. What in Malta is called the Refugee Commission is known in Cyprus as the Asylum Service. This consists of 10 reviewers/adjudicators, compared to what used to be three, now six, in Malta. Appeals from decisions are possible before a judicial review board, and constitutional redress after that where cases are deemed to warrant it. In both cases, the number of reversed decisions at the appellate stage is relatively small, most appeals being considered to be manifestly unfounded or insufficient to meet Convention requirements. Appeal to the Supreme Court, or a Constitutional Court, is possible, usually on points of law.

There are two differences. First, Cyprus has no free legal aid provision to appellants as in Malta; legal aid is offered by NGOs (mainly the World Futures Centre, engaged as an implementing partner by UNHCR). Although UNHCR may attend sittings, in practice they are under-staffed so they don't do this except in special cases. Second, the process is longer in Cyprus than in Malta, with cases in the former generally lasting twice or three times as long as in Malta or longer (so far usually two to three years; in Malta rarely more than 12 months, usually six to nine months).

But the situation is different again. Cyprus does not detain immigrants entering illegally or whose contracts or visas have expired. If they claim asylum, they are registered and in principle they should receive a welfare payment without the right to work in the first six months. Subsequently they were permitted to work mainly in agricultural areas but this restriction was meant to be somewhat relaxed recently to include some other types of employment in urban areas, although once again the relevant statistics must be difficult to compile and are generally unavailable.

Doubts were expressed to me from various sources, especially NGOs and UNHCR, as to how soon or how much or how sufficiently welfare payments are in fact handed out, with the result that most immigrants end up working illegally. The Ombudsman has been critical of the prevailing situation.

In other words, while there is neither a detention policy as in Malta, which however ensures a modicum of control and the provision of basic needs, nor is there an assurance that such basic needs are provided at all quickly or adequately by the state while the immigrants "roam free". Moreover, in Malta applicants are normally interviewed within six to nine months; if they are not so interviewed within 12 months, they are released and may benefit from the welfare conditions prevailing at the "open" centres. More recently some restrictions have been placed in the case of such immigrants/asylum seekers who have obtained a work permit and a job, and who thus become eligible to less assistance than before. In the case of applicants whose cases are rejected at first instance as well at the appellate stage, these remain in detention for up to 18 months, after which they are similarly released. Those held to be deserving of refugee status, a higher minority than in Cyprus, become Convention refugees with immediate effect, while in Cyprus such cases tend to drag on until further verifications are undertaken. In the words of Doros Polykarpou, director of KISA, a leading NGO, "it takes longer to grant status than to reject it". Delays in the adjudication process have been lasting up to two or even three years, but the new Minister of the Interior assured me that one of his priorities was to hasten this process, for which it is planned that more eligibility officers be recruited. In 2006, 3,835 decisions were taken, up to 4,450 in 2007, in efforts to decrease the backlog.

There are no "closed" or detention centres as such in Cyprus: in difficult or "uncooperative" cases these people go to prison, but a consideration does exist for vulnerable cases. One persistent problem concerns failed Iranian asylum applicants who refuse to voluntarily sign a declaration saying they wish to return to Iran, as expected by Iran; evocatively enough, a few of these prefer to remain in a prison cell in Cyprus than sign any such declaration to return to Iran. Prison normally is used only for persons after a verdict by a judge - similarly in Malta if an asylum seeker is convicted of a criminal offence. The Cyprus detention centre, known as "Block 10", is for persons awaiting deportation, including rejected asylum cases, while there is no centre as such for vulnerable cases.

At present, nearly 8,000 cases are being adjudicated in Cyprus, compared to some 700 in Malta, where there are no longer any delays at all at the appellate stage before the Refugee Appeals Board. This is because the legal aid system has been revamped with a special pool of lawyers seeing specifically to submissions on behalf of appellants who request such assistance, in which process they are advised, counselled or legally assisted directly by NGOs, mainly the Jesuit Refugee Service. Most NGOs in Malta are ecclesiastically run or ecclesiastically associated while most of those in Cyprus are secular, although occasionally in Cyprus too Church-associated bodies or persons offer much-needed help in extremis. Such a specific legal aid pool in Malta has eliminated the earlier backlog which the Refugee Appeals Board had to face solely and simply because it refused to adjudicate cases asking for legal aid, to which they were entitled at law, without their having first received it.

Whereas in Malta most asylumseekers arrive in boats and go ashore or are rescued at sea by the Maltese Armed Forces, in Cyprus most illegal immigrants who then claim asylum arrive on foot, by land, across the porous Green Line, coming from the Turkish north, mainly via Turkey, Syria or Lebanon.

Given the unfortunate situation in Cyprus since 1974, the EU does not recognise the Green Line as an international border; it is up to Cyprus to tackle it. Thus it is more difficult for the Cypriot authorities to keep track of who is entering, although they will know better when an application for asylum and a welfare payment is duly filled in. Statistical data is kept by different bodies dealing with migration, finance and the police, but the computerised database from asylum applications only takes stock of a limited number of factors, such as nationality.

Efforts at integration have been started in Malta mainly by means of a government-sponsored agency. Some such efforts have also started being made in Cyprus, partly with EU funds such as through the programme Equal; moreover multi-racialism has always been more prevalent in Cyprus than in Malta, where ethnic or religious clashes have been unknown so far. Naturally, all kinds of problems, including discrimination, can arise when it comes to housing or schooling, although it is not uncommon to hear complaints from local tax-paying citizens (certainly in Malta) that asylum-seekers are sometimes given preference, for example at the public hospital. As one leading Cypriot researcher in this field, Prof. Nicos Trimiklionitis, put it to me, whereas the north of the island is a transit, its south is a destination. In other words, migrants enter Cyprus legally or illegally and then usually claim asylum because they want to stay on to live and work in Cyprus, whether indefinitely or for a number of years.

This does not seem to be a problem because there is a construction boom under way while catering establishments flourish everywhere, in parallel fashion with Malta but on a larger scale (tourist input is also somewhat higher, although probably not per capita).

In addition, however, many workers in these domains, as in Malta or indeed in Britain or Ireland or elsewhere, now come from the former Communist countries of eastern Europe or the Balkans (whether EU or not).

Although there have a been a few cases in Malta where asylum applicants arriving illegally and undocumented have said they wished to go to Malta specifically, in most cases it would seem that arrivals did not see the tiny island as an ultimate destination but as a temporary transit, or were led to believe so by traffickers. In fact, as matters stand, unless they can be repatriated once their applications fail, or unless they are granted a humanitarian status, or somehow make their way elsewhere, these generally end up staying in Malta. In practice, deportation strategy is far weaker in Malta than it is in Cyprus, where according to various respondents thousands have been and continue to be sent back. In Malta such numbers would be counted in the hundreds at best. Moreover, temporary humanitarian protection is granted on a much higher percentage scale in Malta, where on average over the past six years some 45 per cent (2,625 out of 5,856) have benefited and continue to benefit from this "temporary" or "transitory" condition, generally in deference to UNHCR's recommendations. By European standards even the percentage of those granted refugee status (3.3 per cent) is high. At a Local Councils' Association discussion in Kalkara on May 18 it transpired that to safeguard its own quotas UNHCR, an inter-governmental agency, had interfered to stop several hundred Malta arrivals from being permanently resettled in one or two other EU member states. The Maltese police authorities systematically clamp down on asylum-seekers trying to stow away, or traffickers trying to facilitate their departure from the island, arresting and arraigning all such in court with a good chance of getting them imprisoned. At the same time, countries such as Sweden regularly return to Malta asylum-seekers who would first have set foot on the island, in accordance with the EU's Dublin Convention. It is not clear what effect, if any, membership of the Schengen area by Malta and Cyprus might have in the sphere of mobility within the EU for asylum-seekers, whether failed or not.

Here it becomes relevant to consider the provenance of illegal immigrants/asylum seekers. Whereas in Cyprus most come from the Near East, the Middle East and Asia, and are economic migrants, with some notable exceptions (Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Turkey, China), in Malta most come from rather more turbulent or disturbed areas in sub-Saharan Africa - from the east (Eritrea, Somalia) to the centre (Sudan including Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo) to the west (Sierra Leone, Cameroun).

The Cypriot and the Maltese statistical data concerning provenance and numbers are self-explanatory; but what needs to be considered is if, on the whole, there is any greater likelihood of humanitarian protection being required, on Convention grounds, for applicants from sub-Saharan Africa than from the Near East (mainly Syria) or the Far East (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). In addition, a good number of those who have been applying for asylum in Cyprus have done so after having entered the country on student visas or after their fixed-term labour contracts expired. Greater scrutiny is now being exercised by the state with regard to applicants for student visas, much to the chagrin of privately-owned colleges.

According to the National Association of Private Tertiary Education Schools, in Bangladesh, this year Cypriot migration authorities declined almost 90 per cent of visa applications by students. Two years ago, something of a racket was uncovered at the Maltese embassy in Beijing where hundreds of young Chinese were being readily granted visas supposedly to come and study English in Malta.

A burning issue here is whether persons who had entered a country legally for a stated purpose should then benefit from a refugee status sur place, or indeed whether they could be entitled to a permanent residence if they had been there for five years legally, somehow in accordance with the relevant EU directive. On this point there is a difference of opinion between the courts, the ombudsman and others.

Long-term solutions are not easy to come by; a privately suggested option for Cyprus has been that for a one-off amnesty to then regularise the situation and the better to monitor it. In Italy, and even France, the trends are quite different.

Both Malta and Cyprus are critical of the EU's apparent reluctance to do more to help the island states on its frontiers. Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis, who already served as Minister of the Interior in an earlier administration, has a reputation as a go-getter, while his counter-part the Minister of Justice, Kyprus Chrysostomides, is held in high repute as a theoretician: both form part of the newly-elected AKEL Cabinet, which on paper represents a Communist Party.

In Malta, the functions of Home Affairs and Justice are combined; here too a new minister in a new Nationalist Party administration, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, is taking over such an onus from his predecessor, Tonio Borg, now the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The party's name in Malta is, like the one of Cyprus, largely historical, and can be misread by contemporary criteria if taken too literally. Both parties are pro-European, with the former keen on finding a mutually acceptable federalist solution to the festering Cyprus problem which for decades has had Turkey, Greece and Britain mixed up in its "national" equation. Hence the opening of Ledra Street.

Minister Syliokitis confided to me that it was his intention soon to convene a conference in Cyprus for ministers of the interior from southern Europe and the European Mediterranean to brainstorm and come up with some solutions in connection with this whole question of mass illegal immigration and asylum-seeking, which he would like to see more coordinated and better managed nationally in his own country as well as in an EU context, with due regard for a fairer distribution of tasks and burdens.

(Concluded. Part I was carried yesterday.)