Tuesday, 2nd December 2008
EU grants Malta €5m to return illegal immigrants
The EU yesterday approved a grant of €5 million which will be used towards repatriation schemes for illegal immigrants over the next five years.
The figure for returnees remains low compared to the arrivals and the major problem is usually not the expense but the difficulty of establishing the nationality of the migrants, who often do not carry any documentation.
However, the fresh injection over the next five years should help Malta deal better with the situation.
In fact, these funds, allocated under the European Return Fund, are also designed to facilitate joint return operations of illegal immigrants between EU member states.
Following its go-ahead, the European Commission yesterday said that during the next 12 months, Malta will be using these funds to promote sustainable voluntary return by offering tailor-made assistance, counselling and information, and reintegration packages to returnees as well as to perform forced return operations of third-country nationals staying illegally.
EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot yesterday admitted that Malta is facing strong migratory pressures and encouraged the island to implement activities in order to increase the number of persons returning both through national as well as joint actions in co-operation with other EU member states.
The approval of these new funds to be used in the migration sector is the second in less than a month.
In November, Brussels had already approved the granting of another €5 million of EU funds to Malta in order to help the island improve its structures dealing with refugees and asylum seekers including reception centres and support services.
The Commission is currently also evaluating an additional submission by the Maltese authorities under the European Refugee Fund for €500,000 in "extraordinary funds" following the increase in the number of asylum seekers which arrived on Malta's shores during the summer. The funds are needed to refurbish and expand part of the detention centre in Lyster Barracks at Ħal Far.
RSS
Comments
It is imperative that there is no complacency in this matter. I also urge the government to focus on doing everything possible to dissuade people who may be contemplating illegal immigration by making the prospect as unappealing as possible. This can be done in a number of ways: 1. Frontex should turn back the boatloads rather than bringing them in. 2. The ones that are brought to shore should be processed immediately and those who are not genuine refugees should be forcefully repatriated forthwith. 3. Those who do not cooperate with the authorities about their country of origin should be held in detention indefinately until they tell the truth.
Rewarding illegal immigrants by paying them to go back home will only encourage more to risk their lives for financial gain. If they're happy to go home after being paid, then there was no danger in the first place. People should not be rewarded for breaking a country's laws.
@Lawrence: Where are the volunteers, to help with the burden sharing?? If 5,000,000 Euros would help. Think what 60 million Euros would do. Stop the City Gate nonsense, and work on Malta biggest crisis since WW2. Saving Malta comes first, City gate a far second.
UNHCR says (http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/STATISTICS/48f742792.pdf) that in the three months April/May/June of 2008 Malta received asylum seekers from the following countries which do not qualify for refugee status: Ivory Coast 100, Nigeria 65, Togo 42, Niger 35, Ghana 32, Mali 30 and Burkina Faso 18. That is, 322 in all.
If UNHCR knows their nationality, the Maltese government must know it too. What has Mifsud Bonnici done to repatriate these 322 illegal immigrants?
A well publicised campaign of repatriation would have the added advantage of dissuasion – other illegal immigrants would avoid Malta because of the risk of being sent back to their own country.
Let us look beyond our nose. If we start paying them money so that they remember their country of origin -or whatever voluntary return means-, for every migrant that accept "voluntary return", it will act as an incentive for another migrant to come here.
The goverment has to keep true to his word when he explained to us that with the new EU pact he signed our country will be able to avail itself of foreign military planes in order to repatriate most of those that are in our country illegally.