A Church home which offers shelter to homeless young men has suffered a fall in donations ever since it started offering refuge to young asylum seekers.
Dar Osanna Pia has for the past 10 years been bearing the brunt of racist sentiment. “Ten years ago we started taking in unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, and that was when donations went flat,” said director Savio Vella, in an appeal for authorities to be more cautious in their speeches.
Over the years he says that he has been approached by people who specifically informed him they had stopped donating because “Osanna Pia is housing foreigners”.
Donations collected at Christmas time abruptly went down from about €10,000 to €2,000. “I want to make it clear that we are not in a financial crisis because I don’t want to give the impression I am raising this issue to attract sympathy – thanks to L-Istrina which helps us out in projects, we always manage to balance our books,” he said.
He was speaking up, he said, because he wanted to highlight the fact that Christians needed to be careful not to adopt a racist attitude.
“I am proud to be Maltese because we are so generous – but our fear when it comes to immigrants is hindering our kindness. Asylum seekers are people who suffered a lot and have every right to be welcomed by us.”
I am proud to be Maltese because we are so generous – but our fear when it comes to immigrants is hindering our kindness
While admitting that the influx of asylum seekers was a problem for Malta – “we cannot bury our heads in the sand” – he said it was up to the authorities to make sure that myths were killed.
“One typical misconception is that these migrants are living off our taxes: they are not – we have help from the EU.”
He said that people should be made more aware that immigrants have not made a difference to the Maltese standard of living. “It’s actually gone up in these 10 years, thank God.”
He said that a possible cause for the increase in racism was people in authority did not choose their words carefully enough when speaking in public. “Their words have to be more charitable,” he insisted.