The immigrant that eluded vigilance

I refer to the article Refugee Finally Cleared To Travel To The US (May 27th). I am shocked and dismayed at the manipulative manner which enabled this travesty of what should have been an uplifting and happy ending for someone deserving of a new life full of hope, opportunity and relative freedom away from the squalor of a Maltese illegal immigrant detention centre. This individual was accepted into the US Department of Homeland Security resettlement programme despite his obviously less than savoury criminal record.

The Maltese authorities had a pending court case against him for having inflicted grievous bodily harm on another individual. Furthermore, he was caught attempting to flee the country in breach of his bail conditions, while awaiting trial. It is likely that he had entered Malta illegally, and would have thus been a willing participant in the despicable crime of human trafficking. Being somewhat familiar with the rigorous character and background checks thousands of Maltese had to be subjected to in order to gain eligibility to emigrate to the US (a squeaky clean police record, an acceptable level of education, freedom from TB or sexually-transmitted diseases, never having belonged to a Communist Party or taken part in any activity against a democratically elected government activity, to name just a few), makes one wonder at the "rigour" with which this individual's background was investigated.

This person must be laughing all the way to the US while thanking his lucky stars at how he has managed to dupe all involved starting from our head-in-the-sand government (one less to worry about), our extremely lenient court system (he now becomes someone else's problem), the now-discredited UNHCR (chalk up yet another success story - this helps at funding time!), and last but not least, what is purportedly an ever-vigilant US Department of Homeland Security. The latter was created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorism tragedy and was assigned responsibility for coordinating US Security and the filtering out of potential threats.

Due to the absence of any effort at burden-sharing by our so-called EU partners, the US has earned our eternal gratitude for helping to alleviate Malta's illegal immigration problem, but surely there were other more deserving persons who could have qualified for the US resettlement programme. Shame on the UNHCR, local NGOs and the Maltese government for preying so blatantly on the goodwill of the US government.