Migrants refused asylum but unable to be returned home are stuck in a legal limbo and denied the right to travel, social benefits or recognition of their marriages, Parliament’s Family Affairs Committee was told yesterday.
Of the 14,500 asylum applicants Malta has received since 2002, just under 5,500 have had their applications refused. But although technically eligible for repatriation, logistical and humanitarian difficulties mean they remain here.
Existing laws deny them the right to obtain a temporary travel document or receive social benefits, even if they work regularly and pay monthly National Insurance contributions.
These concerns were among those raised by Emigrant’s Commission head Monsignor Philip Calleja during yesterday’s committee session.
He noted how such migrants had had the right to a travel document up to 2007, but that the Government had suddenly decided to change its policy.
This, Emigrants’ Commission director Fr Alfred Vella said, was to Malta’s own detriment. He described a case where a man granted a travel document by the Italian government had packed his bags and moved to Malta – because his wife, denied asylum in Malta, had no way of visiting him in Italy.
Mgr Calleja argued that a double standard was being applied to beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. A total of 6,700 individuals have been given such protection since 2002, with some 1,500 of those having been resettled in other countries – mostly the USA.
But while those lucky enough to be resettled could obtain citizenship and travel rights from their new host country, the 5,500 other protected migrants who remained in Malta had no such opportunity.
“Those who remain in Malta and settle here should be given the right to bring their family over after five years, and the right to apply for citizenship after 10,” he said. “Why should they be treated differently?”
Other problems concerned the registration of newly-born babies with no apparent nationality. In one case, the Maltese Government had refused to register a baby born in international waters. In another, two babies whose parents died while crossing the Mediterranean had found themselves similarly undocumented.
The first baby and her family have since been resettled in France, Fr Vella said. “But we’re using it as a test case and have opened a constitutional court case on the matter,” he told The Times.
Labour MP Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca expressed concern on the issue, and said that many Maltese seemed to lack knowledge of the asylum system in general.
“A lot of it is fear of the unknown,” she noted as she implied that the time had come for Malta to look at cultural integration strategies.
“Society is far more diverse nowadays. We have to work at strengthening education around these areas and remove any fears,” she said.
Nationalist MP Charlo Bonnici also expressed a desire to see more educational work around migrant issues, saying that a lack of knowledge often meant humanitarian decisions taken by politicians were misunderstood by members of the public.
Committee chair and PN MP Jean-Pierre Farrugia ended the session by asking which of the matters the Commission considered the most urgent.
“The NI issue,” Fr Vella immediately replied, referring to making status-less migrants pay NI contributions but denying them social benefits. “It’s so clearly discriminatory. It has to change.”