A hastily-cooked plan

Given that Joseph Muscat spent 50 months in the European Parliament without ever taking one single initiative on immigration, I was eagerly awaiting his 20-point plan to save our country from illegal immigration.

In the event, his plan turned out to be hastily cooked and left us none the wiser.

For starters, it was completely silent on important aspects such as the repatriation of illegally-staying immigrants. It also failed to elaborate on Labour's policy on the EU asylum agency, on legal migration and on border management.

But even the proposals that were actually made expose a frightening lack of substance in Labour's policy-making and can be faulted on various counts.

Firstly, some proposals tested Dr Muscat's consistency.

For instance, he announced that he agreed with the government's policy on detention. But then why had he abstained on a vote in the European Parliament to condemn detention as "unacceptable"? Why favour detention in Malta and abstain on it in the European Parliament?

Similarly, Dr Muscat proposed that a parliamentary committee should visit and report on the state in detention centres. Fine, but it bears recalling that when - three years ago - the European Parliament sent a parliamentary delegation to visit detention centres in Malta, Dr Muscat was the only one of five Maltese MEPs to fail to accompany the delegation. He was conspicuous by his absence and has since never visited a detention centre.

Secondly, some proposals are not practical.

For instance, Dr Muscat stated that conditions in detention centres should be improved and immigrants segregated on the basis of sex, status and ethnic group. I agree that more should be done to improve conditions and there is EU financial support to help us do just that.

But the sheer numbers stretch our capacity far beyond their limits and this makes it very difficult for our conditions to be good, let alone flexible enough to segregate immigrants better. Suffice it to say that if a centre is built to house 200 people, conditions will rapidly deteriorate the moment you put into it 1,000 people.

Thirdly, some proposals betray a serious lack of awareness on Labour's part.

For instance, Dr Muscat spoke on the need to change the EU's Dublin regulation, insisting that we should veto EU decisions sporadically until this is done. But he appeared completely oblivious of the fact that this law has been under review since December and - as irony would have it - the European Parliament was discussing it just as Dr Muscat rose to make his immigration speech last Monday.

Similarly, Dr Muscat spoke out against illegal employment but he seemed unaware that only last month the European Parliament adopted a new law to impose very tough financial, administrative and even criminal sanctions on employers caught employing immigrants illegally.

The same applies to Frontex whose mandate, according to Dr Muscat, should be reviewed. He appeared unaware that we are awaiting new Commission proposals on this.

Fourthly, some proposals are unreasonable and defy logic.

Dr Muscat's claim that we should set a quota for the number of immigrants that we could admit defies logic because it wrongly suggests that this could somehow help us stop anyone above the quota from entering. This is ridiculous because, in the main, the immigrants who arrive here are those we save out at sea. And because we are a civilised country there is no question that we should not let them drown.

Whereas Dr Muscat's speech was laced with repeated references to legality, he then unashamedly suggested that we should ignore our legal obligations under EU rules (on Eurodac) and international law and use our veto sporadically.

I am not sure that Greece and Italy took kindly to Dr Muscat's claim that they ignore Eurodac rules on fingerprinting. But let me just reiterate that if we feel that an EU rule affects us adversely then we should seek to change it and not flout it.

And, of course, Dr Muscat's call for Malta to veto EU decisions "sporadically" is dangerous and irresponsible because it would harm our national interest irreparably.

So, on balance, Dr Muscat's 20-point plan was a let-down because it is a far poorer alternative to the policy that the Administration is already implementing in an area where, admittedly, there are no quick-fix solutions. As such, the plan does not help us edge one notch closer to overcoming the challenge of immigration.

And politically this plan is not what one would expect from a moderate and progressive Socialist leader. It sounds dangerously familiar to what far-right exponents like AN have been saying. If this is Dr Muscat's new political season, then we are all in for some rough weather.

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Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.