The case for integrating immigrants

Five years after EU membership, one yardstick is being used to measure Malta's successes and failures: How closely has the country approached European standards? The closer, the better. But conventional wisdom makes one exception: the integration of immigrants.

Note that integration involves only legal immigrants, who include those who may have entered irregularly but whose status has been legalised in accordance with human rights law. Immigrants who have no right to remain in Europe are off the discussion; they should be expelled not integrated. Even so, on this issue, in blogs, online commentary and conversation, Europe is indicated as the example to avoid.

How good is this judgment? It is right that there are serious European mistakes that we should avoid. But it is wrong that we avoid them by not having an integration policy. On the contrary, that is precisely the way to repeat them.

The government apparently believes something else. It endorses a version of the conventional wisdom: Integration may possibly be good for Europe but not for us. The government has not done much on integration, apparently by design. Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici has offered the desire of most immigrants to move elsewhere as a reason for the inaction.

Simon Busuttil's report on immigration for the European Parliament echoes this reasoning. It underlines "that a good integration process is the best tool to eliminate mistrust and suspicion between native citizens and migrants and is fundamental to removing any xenophobic ideas". Integration is "beneficial both for the migrants and for the host society". But, with evident reference to Malta: "Clearly, integration is less possible in countries which are facing exceptional migratory pressures because these countries lack the capacity to integrate large numbers of migrants and, in any case, migrants often intend to move to other parts of Europe".

Formulating one rule for Europe and giving grounds for possible exceptions might sound like a resolution but not on closer scrutiny.

First, suppose Malta achieves its aim, European solidarity is forthcoming and burden-sharing is institutionalised. Sharing a burden means you keep some of it. Malta would now not be able to invoke exceptional pressures but still have immigrants to deal with. Would it be good policy for Malta to begin to address integration only then? Delay may make success more difficult.

Second, the report, which is generally excellent, seems to depict integration and migrants' mobility as opposites. But a good national policy of integration could encompass integration-into-Europe; that is, serve to train migrants in the linguistic, cultural and job skills that would facilitate their attractiveness to other national job markets.

In short, even if one allows all the arguments for making Malta a splendid exception, it is not clear that, on integration, it is in Malta's interest to act like one.

But would integration be inherently unworkable, whatever pieties the EP might utter? Have there not been sufficient events in the news to show the folly of "multiculturalism"?

Those questions merge two issues: the need for a "multicultural policy" and the various and changing ways that European countries have found to address that need. The need is real, as necessary as the need for a fiscal policy. But just as many fiscal policies may be misguided, many multicultural policies have in practice created social problems as much as resolved others.

The Busuttil report, like many other European documents these days, avoids the term "multiculturalism". Europe has learnt some important lessons from the experience of multicultural society over the last three decades. "Integration" is to come with responsibilities and duties for migrants, not just rights and welfare.

From a Maltese perspective, however, it is worth noting that some of the most important mistakes had to do with failure to integrate migrants. "Multiculturalism" often was a code-word for the state's indifference to how migrants arranged their community life. Ghettos were created because of lack of spatial planning and the hosting of immigrants in empty barracks and council estates. The assumption that migrants were not there to stay served as excuse for the state not to concern itself unduly with structural inequality, even as cultural identity became embedded in low status.

European experience can serve as a good warning for Malta: to avoid the policy of inaction that we have adopted, which uncomfortably resembles that which did so much damage to the fabric of several European societies.

Of course, mistakes were not due only to inaction. Colonial guilt plus wrong-headed assumptions about culture and religion sometimes served to strengthen the hand of the bigots among immigrant groups.

It would in any case be a mistake to follow any country's example as a blueprint, no matter how successful its integration policy. Malta needs to devise a policy that addresses its peculiar history, circumstances and immigration pattern.

Let such a policy be subject to public debate and political argument, from left and right, but let us have one. Having an integration policy is not barmy. Not having one is.

ranierfsadni@europe.com