‘Rich’ way to tackle refugees

A friend of mine told me that we have so many refugees and irregular immigrants because, as he put it, altering Winston Churchill’s words about Italy in World War II, “Malta is the soft underbelly of Europe”. How apt, I thought, shelving my belief that we are really the soft cerebellum.

Refugees come to Malta and Italy because we have moral constraints while others have not

We are soft because we’re pig in the middle: geography is something we cannot change. We are the underbelly because Europe is where the refugees want to go. These are the facts. If we stop there, if we fail to question the semantics, we are faced with an eternal problem because, love these people as much as you like (and hatred certainly has no place in this), they create a problem we could jolly well do without.

I am going to question the semantics and, hence, the politics built on them.

They reach us from Libya – no doubt about that – but they come from afar and that is precisely what I query. These people are entitled to flee from danger.

Who isn’t?

So they leave their country but they don’t stop at the neighbouring country, or the next, or the one after that, they just go right across the whole length of Africa to reach Libya, probably stopping only in resting stages, or laps, until they reach Libya.

They’re not interested in any State on the African continent. They just make a beeline for the springboard to Europe.

Is it possible that they cannot build a new life in an African State? No South Africa, no Ghana, no Liberia, none?

Then they pay criminals to give them a hazardous trip across a moody Mediterranean because they want to go to Europe, full stop. They pay money and irresponsibly imperil their own lives because of their obsession with a Europe flowing with milk and honey. They ignore Africa.

Their safety requires sizeable expense on our part and often causes unwanted tiffs with the Italians. Is this right?

A refugee is a person who seeks refuge. Is refuge only available if you cross the whole of Africa and then the Mediterranean?

Is it possible that Malta is the only country within 6,000+ miles that offers refuge?

The whole of Africa thinks so and so does the whole of Europe. So do a lot of people here. The Africans and the Europeans think that way because they are mean, whereas ‘we’ think so because we’re soft in the head.

In conventions, political forums, trade fairs, by means of all their embassies, all African states proclaim their stability, progressive politics and financial well-being but when it comes to harbouring refugees it becomes a different story.

They want it both ways: they want the investment that comes with their hype but, when push comes to shove, they claim they are too poor or unsettled to accept refugees. Convenient!

The reason why the refugees come to Malta and Italy is that we have moral constraints while the others –whether to the North or to the South- have not.

Moody’s and all the other rating agencies seem to send European MPs rushing to the loo but not the African ones. The funny thing is Africa has many more primary resources offering A class investments than Europe, which, pathetically, plays about with paper money investments internally, and then is astonished when their paper bag bursts in their faces.

Yet, investment in Africa has always been extremely risky and will probably always remain so because of the volatility of the myriad cultures constituting what we call ‘Africa’. Still, dangerous countries will always try to convince potential investors that they will protect them but they will not protect vulnerable refugees.

So far, those local people who feel that, since things are so, we have to bear the burden are correct. But only up to this point. This position results merely from international compliance with the laws as they stand.

If the laws are changed, the problem will disappear.

International laws regarding refugee status would constitute a good start. As it is, if your life is in danger, you can claim refugee status in any country you choose. That should be changed to applying for refugee status in the nearest country in which your life is not imperilled. This should not be dependent on the neighbouring country’s will but on its stability.

‘Stability’ should be taken to mean that a country is not in a state of civil war or engaged in hostilities with another country. Each African country should be made to declare its status by the United Nations so that if a country declares it is not stable, rating agencies would issue warnings to potential investors.

Of course, the big investors know very well the position of a country but they would not then be able to hoodwink the millions of small investors into putting their money into hazardous or immoral ventures.

The United Nations should really start to clean up the African mess. If African countries declare they are stable, they would be attracting investment but would not be able to refuse refugees. That would responsibilise them to seeing to the festering sores around them. It would be in their interest to solve these problems for they would get the investment without the refugees. We would breathe a sigh of relief.

Multinational companies that invest in (and therefore sustain) scoundrel states should be penalised. A romantic illusion, one would say.

It is a matter of will. Malta should militate for a change in international law governing refugee status. It does not amount to a dereliction of our responsibility but, rather, to the forcing of responsibility on those who renege it to their own advantage.

Our diplomatic corps should have this as the primary item on the agenda and MPs should start fashioning the verbal tools needed for the onslaught.

© Charles Caruana Carabez 2013.