Over these last weeks the media spotlight has once again focused on the plight of migrants in Malta. In November, a few days after Donald Trump won the American presidential elections on an anti-immigrant platform, our government announced that it would round up and deport 33 immigrants from Mali who were failed asylum seekers. It also announced that the Temporary Humanitarian Protection Status granted over the years to hundreds of other migrants would not be renewed.

A week ago the body of Haji, a Somali migrant, was found under the Marsa bridge that he had made his home. Haji died alone in the cold, where animals find shelter, just a few days before International Human Rights Day.

NGOs have described Haji’s shocking death as a wake-up call to the State that largely ignores the precarious condition of migrants in Malta. They have argued that government is well aware that many of the migrants whose Protection Status has been stripped away have lived in Malta for years and are well integrated socially and economically, yet they cannot fulfil the new identification requirements. So that they effectively face deportation as well.

The NGOs have condemned the rolling back of the right to dignity and security of these families, this “regression of fundamental human rights for some, and a clear path towards destitution for most”, by a government that prides itself in being a world leader in the advancement of civil rights.

Haji and the migrants facing deportation are victims of the same self-centred indifference that has become normalised in Maltese politics and social life. Our government’s migrant policy, we are told, must first and foremost “look for ourselves”. Is the Nationalist Party’s stance any different?

Government may well be following the letter of the law, and it knows that the majority actively or tacitly approve of the hardening of its stance. But where is its moral leadership?

I am not trying to simplify the intractability of the migrant issue. It is true that Malta, a micro-state with no hinterland, would not cope with 6,000 immigrants in one day, as happened recently in Italy. The immigrant policy of the previous administration was also strongly criticised. Some of the migrants who now face deportation have been left hanging for long years, allowing them and their families to become rooted in Maltese society. But it is this administration that now has the power and responsibility to act.

Is the only possible response to the migrant crisis by a democratic sovereign state, proud of its European heritage and EU membership, what has happened to Haji and the migrants facing deportation? Government may well be following the letter of the law, and it knows that the majority actively or tacitly approve of the hardening of its stance. But where is its moral leadership?

There are beacons of hope in this otherwise gloomy scenario. In her State of the Nation address on Republic Day, President Marie-Louis Coleiro Preca stood up to be counted: “I believe that Malta should continue to host all those who live among us, or those who come to visit us, with the utmost love and respect. I am morally convinced that we should appreciate, and not condemn, persons who are helping to build our prosperity, and who form part of our society, by sending them back.”

President Coleiro Preca deserves all our support. She was grown steadily into her role, from the doubtful beginning as queen of charity kitsch to an authoritative voice articulating the conscience of the nation.

One way to demonstrate our support to the President’s principled stand is to join the growing number of signatories to a letter by University of Malta academics asking government to review its planned deportation of the Malian migrants. Send your name and ID number to colin.calleja@um.edu.mt.

This could be your most meaningful act this Christmas session, when we commemorate the migrant family of Bethlehem.

Holy tweet!

If anyone needed further evidence of the prescience of God, one would only need to consider this: each of the Ten Commandments fits comfortably in a tweet, with space to spare for a snappy comment. It should therefore come as no surprise that we are privy to the thoughts of Archbishop Charles Scicluna through his rapid-fire electronic observations. If Donald Trump can do foreign policy via Twitter, why should not Archbishop Scicluna seek to set the world instantly to rights via his own fidgety finger?

So, let this come as a final warning to all sinners such as property speculators, exploiters of the workers and the like. Desist, or we shall unleash our ultimate weapon: Super-Twitch, the tweeting finger of our very own Archbishop. You can try and hide behind your gluttony and your cross-party connections, but from his twitchy pink blur there is no escape.