Karm Farrugia may have misinterpreted (January 2) the President of the Republic’s speech (I heard the relevant bit on radio) when the latter was referring to genuine refugees, not economic migrants, from Africa and the Middle East. Economist Farrugia seems to equate immigration with unemployment and economic ruin and challenges other economists to prove him wrong.

As I am no economist, I’ll have to rely on quoting from a recent issue of a London financial magazine (MoneyWeek, December 20 “Both migration and a rising population are a powerful driver of economic growth.

“One day, perhaps, the textbooks will have a few examples of countries that managed to combine a declining population and a growing economy but, so far, there haven’t been any.

“The only major country with a declining population right now is Japan and we all know how successful it has been over the last two decades. Once the population starts to fall, so does the number of workers. Too few are left to support the growing numbers of pensioners and increasingly geriatric societies lose appetite for risk and innovation. Government deficits swell out of control as tax revenues go down and spending on healthcare soars. Growth evaporates.”

I trust we’re not trying to twist economics in an effort to express antipathy to non-white faces.