My congratulations to The Times for a very balanced and objective article (Fewer Migrants Repatriated, October 25).

Lawrence Gonzi says his government is combating illegal immigration in three ways: border control, repatriation and burden-sharing.

Border control has failed dismally. Frontex did not turn out to be a border control agency which protects Malta's and the EU's southern border from illegal entry, but a ferry service complementing the work of the traffickers in human beings.

Burden-sharing has also been a great disappointment. According to the article, only 257 refugees were resettled in the US and the EU.

The recently signed EU Immigration and Asylum Pact, hailed by the government as one of its successes, has been met with scepticism by the Maltese public. After all, other EU countries will share the burden of our illegal immigrants only if they so choose. Most of them have closed their doors to immigration and will do so more drastically as the current economic crisis takes hold. Some EU countries, having forceful repatriation programmes of their own, cannot be expected to shoulder part of our burden.

That leaves repatriation. The article affirms that 5,192 illegal immigrants have been repatriated since 2002, but does not give a breakdown by year and country of origin. In any case, that piece of good news is put into perspective by the fact that the number of repatriations has been falling yearly - only 181 in the first eight months of this year. The reasons for the failure of repatriation boil down to one, namely, bad faith. As the article says, some immigrants "tend to lie about their origin", others "often refuse to collaborate with the diplomats" sent by their own countries, while in other cases "countries simply refuse to take back their countrymen".

Obviously countries of origin and illegal immigrants are taking advantage of the generosity of the Maltese government and people. This is confirmed by a study Asylum Levels And Trends In Industrialised Countries, First Half 2008, published by UNHCR on October 17, which can be accessed on www.unhcr.org. On page 4 we read: "Southern Europe experienced a significant decrease in asylum applications in the first six months of 2008... compared to the corresponding period of 2007 (-20 per cent). This decrease, however, was not uniform across the region. In Malta, for instance, the number of asylum claims lodged during the first six months of the year in fact tripled compared to the first half of 2007..." As asylum applications fall in other countries of Southern Europe, they increase three-fold in Malta. Some success for Dr Gonzi's government!