Immigration: The facts

In line with every country in the developed world, Malta has been grappling with the challenges of mass migration for the last seven years. It has tackled this by a combination of measures. At the heart of these was the need to ensure that the paramount national interest was safeguarded through enhanced border control measures and the orderly removal of immigrants ineligible for refugee or protected status.

We need to maintain a sense of perspective about the issue. Although there have been almost 12,500 arrivals in Malta since March 2002, over 7,000 have been repatriated or have otherwise left Malta. Of those that remain today, about 2,235 are in detention awaiting the processing of their case, or their repatriation. A total of 2,137 are in open accommodation centres and about a further 1,000 are living in the community. Very few, if any, of them want to stay in Malta. They land here inadvertently, having had as their destination of choice mainland Europe, not Malta. In the central Mediterranean this is mainly a route which takes them to Lampedusa, Sicily and thence onwards to Italy and northern Europe. In due course, many of the 5,000 or so here today will leave Malta either through our repatriation efforts or through the resettlement programmes the government has actively been pursuing, or simply by removing themselves. Yet, to read some articles, or the fevered comments by some politicians, you would suppose that Malta is facing a crisis.

We are undoubtedly facing new challenges and we are determined to find ways of rising to them in a practical way. The heavy influx of immigrants in the last few weeks has placed a considerable strain on our limited resources. But it would be wrong and irresponsible to paint the picture as a "state of emergency", "out of control", "a problem getting out of hand" or which "is not sustainable".

These phrases simply fan people's understandable concerns but are far from reality. We need to ensure that rhetoric for the sake of short-term political headlines on a subject of such sensitivity does not get in the way of the facts.

Malta is not being swamped by immigrants. As a proportion of our population, today's numbers amount to under 1.5 per cent. Our small size exacerbates the perception of the problem but when compared to other countries in Europe, the number is relatively small.

Can we do more to reduce the problem? One of the more simplistic proposals which surfaces from time to time is that we should just "send these immigrants back". "They should be towed back into international waters in the direction they came from," said one imaginative commentator, with disgraceful support in the blogs from people who are embarrassingly xenophobic and racist.

There seems to be a view, even among some politicians who should know better, that our international obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees and international search and rescue rules and others can be abrogated unilaterally. The proposal these people make is that we should simply tear up international treaties to which we are party and "send them back".

To pander to this approach is to advocate the law of the jungle. International law and international treaties, like our country's laws, are the basis of civilised and humane conduct between nations. The international rule of law is dependent on peoples and nations that have entered voluntarily into binding agreements adhering to them.

It would be fool-hardy and counter-productive to withdraw from fulfilling our international treaty obligations. Quite apart from the international opprobrium which Malta would attract, it is highly unlikely that it would achieve the practical objective of stemming the tide of immigrants.

These people flee their countries of origin - Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and other African countries - in pursuit of a better life. Migration is a worldwide phenomenon whose roots lie in poverty, economic deprivation, persecution and failed states. "Sending them back" - To where? How? What happens when they return as they surely will? - is not constructive or practical, nor in our wider national interest as a country dependent for our economic growth on foreign direct investment through international trust and civilised behaviour.

Malta belongs to the European Union. Although our friends and allies in the Union have been slower to act on this issue than we wished, the Asylum and Immigration Pact, signed last autumn, offers a range of measures to alleviate some of Malta's problems. We must continue to work unremittingly for the implementation of those treaty obligations. At the same time, we should acknowledge that there are no quick fixes to this global problem.

We, as a nation, have to confront the challenges together, with Christian charity for those who are worse off than ourselves and with a proper sense of balance, goodwill and perspective about a problem which, though serious, is well within our capacity to manage successfully.

The author is adviser to the government on illegal immigration.