Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (February 23) has urged us all "to face up" to the problem of immigration. But how much does his proposal face up to the facts?
It involves, first, recognising no right of asylum, unless an immigrant comes directly from his or her country. Otherwise, the argument that they have escaped persecution or terror "does not hold water".
This means Malta would have to deny a crucial distinction of international law and embraced by all EU member states.
Denying this distinction would mean that Malta suspends its international obligations at law. It would also give our EU partners an important loophole. Recently, the principle of burden sharing was recognised (although not in a way that committed them in detail) with respect to asylum seekers. If we do not recognise any, who will there be for other member states to take?
Of course, that is not the line the EU will take. It will, at the very least, suspend our membership, if not expel us. Because the second part of Dr Pullicino Orlando's proposal is to tow all undocumented immigrants back to international waters, in the direction whence they came, "when the weather is fair".
Call it the pariah strategy: That is how the international community will treat us. It is how it is treating Thailand, the only state that tows immigrants back into international waters.
Not even Australia's right-wing populist, John Howard, attempted it. The closest he got was refusing to accept a ship into Australia's harbours. But what a difference: He was not towing people out and it was a ship not a fragile boat.
The idea behind the proposal may be that once we get rid of the immigrants we can get on with creating wealth and peace of mind. But there is a fatal flaw. Suspension from the EU will run our reputation through the gutter, seriously damaging tourism and jeopardising foreign investment. The cure will be far worse than the problem.
And we will deserve it. Although Dr Pullicino Orlando makes towing immigrants out to sea sound so simple, commonsensical and even possible to do kindly ("every effort must be taken to ensure their safety"), it can only be done callously and with complete disrespect for human life.
Take them out "when the weather is fair"? The weather variable window is far too wide. It would have to be fair for several days; the immigrants would need to be sure to stay on course and not stray into a different weather zone. Hundreds of the immigrants that Thailand has towed out have lost their lives.
In what boats do we put the immigrants? They are arriving in unsafe boats that can carry 200. Do we place them in a fleet of smaller boats that take up to 28? Applied to the 600 recent arrivals, that would involve escorting over 20 boats out to sea.
What if they come back into Maltese waters? Or, if they go back towards Libya (rather than heading for Italy, which would have serious conflict with us as a result), what happens if, say, Libya tows them out again? Do we play ping pong with hundreds of lives?
But that is the kind of detailed implementation that would be necessary. It is why, we would become pariahs. It is why to make such a proposal is not to face up to the facts but to avoid them.
Indeed, one of the most puzzling aspects of his article is its estrangement from many facts. Dr Pullicino Orlando wagers that the UK, France and Germany would each declare a state of emergency (and presumably suspend their international obligations) if faced with a proportionate number of immigrants.
There is no need to speculate. Germany has been there already. In 1992, it had 440,000 requests for asylum (way above Malta's proportionate number) and no help from its European partners. No state of emergency was declared.
And for someone keen to face the facts, Dr Pullicino Orlando does a strange thing: He inflates the figures.
He blows up the numbers France and the UK would proportionately get, by some 30 per cent and, in counting the immigrants to Malta over a five-year period, he counts the arrivals and not the net number that is still here.
Up till a short while ago, he denounced talk "of suspending human rights considerations as a brazen attempt to score cheap political points by riding on the wave of popular concern". He was criticising Alfred Sant's proposal to suspend Malta's international obligations. What is so different about his?
Earlier, too, he used to warn how the issue had led to the creation of a right-wing party. His proposal today, however, is virtually identical to that party's.
In short, his attempt to save us from rising xenophobia sounds rather like the attempt by US generals to save Vietnamese villages from communism: to save the village, it was once notoriously declared, it was necessary to destroy it.
ranierfsadni@europe.com