It is sickeningly against my nature to make half a point and then let others shoot it up or down as they please; so it took every iota of self control not to respond to some of the comments left on part one of this blog.
Whilst I was expecting the staple arguments of sustainability, racial hatred, identity and legality, some other comments had no other purpose than to give me some great material for my next stand up comedy script.
Arguments varied from unfounded claims that historically all Maltese immigrants entered their host country legally, to sweeping statements claiming that our xenophobia is a normal reaction to an alien invasion. Someone went as far as (irony apart) asking me whether I hold a grudge against people whose names are Katarin and Grezju. Someone even tried to discredit the existence of racism in Malta based simply on the fact that I happen not to know the exact historical facts surrounding Ellis island. And just when St. Paul’s and Jesus’s teachings were brought up, they were immediately shot down as irrelevant because allegedly some immigrants said that we might want to keep the boats that they came in on for when we (the Maltese) will have to leave the island. After all this, I feel safe to predict that if St. Paul had to be shipwrecked on our island today, he’d be stuck in a detention centre with the rest of them!
Perhaps best of the lot was the comment accusing me of mixing cabbages with carrots. Since when is this combination a bad thing? The last time I checked mixing all sorts of vegetables makes a great healthy concoction - as would mixing some of our genes with the rest of the world’s!
Despite it being public knowledge that I am not a politician, nor a diplomat or an activist, one of my readers still hoped that in the second part of my blog I would come up with a definite answer/ solution to this problem. Now that I have stopped laughing at the mere presumptuousness of the suggestion, I am at peace knowing that the purpose of my role has been achieved - people are talking, they are reading different point of views and hopefully opening up to the remote idea that two different ideas and a host of different cultures can co-exist.
I do understand how tricky it is to come up with the right balance. Clearly there’s no way of pleasing everyone. Giving the illegal immigrants more rights angers the conservatives whilst the liberals will never think that anyone is doing enough to protect the poor immigrants. Additionally it seems that we have to do this all alone because Europe is giving us the cold shoulder and if we invite the presidents of these third world countries to discuss the situation they could quite easily get lost in the system, start living off our taxes, or even worse offer to do our president’s job for €3 an hour.
Perhaps I’m being too one-sided here because in reality our illegal immigrants are far better off than we think. Just pop over to any detention centre or even to Tent City, and you will see that they offer amazing benefits – from free housing with ample ventilation in summer and the freezing winters, to free bicycles with complimentary deflated tiers and one year’s free fuel. I also heard through the grape vine that they get a lifetime supply of Chateau De Chablis. Admittedly the clothing arrangements could use some improvements because at the moment the choice is limited to Pierre Cardin’s and Armani’s collections. Playstations and Nintendos are also in abundance so the children are kept adequately entertained. The only shame is that because of the cities’ secluded locations, the latest computer games arrive to them two whole days after release.
Let’s face it, the least these ‘boat people’ can do is to learn how to adapt to our culture. To start off with they should adopt our queuing system by appropriately forming a mosh pit at every shop counter, they should adopt our traditional pick up line of ‘Aw Sex’, or ‘Aw Gobon’, and they should also keep their houses pristine clean by throwing all the dirt outside. They should learn how to neatly double-park their bicycles on double yellow lines and parking spots for the disabled, they should learn how to treat zebra crossings as road decorations, and if they really want to fit in they should stick raunchy bumper stickers that say ‘your eyes in my.....’ on their bicycles.
We’re ok with losing the Maltese language to the American accent of movies, and our Maltese ‘hajt tas-sejjieh’ for big concrete buildings inspired by European cities. We’re also ok with having the English language as our second official language, because this allows us to ‘teach’ it to thousands of foreign students and make money. We’re ok with losing the ‘minestra’ and the ‘bragioli’ for hot dogs and burgers, but just because we’re ready to accept all this, does not mean that we’re ready to merge our culture with that of the ‘boat people maaa’, until of course we figure how to make money off it!
As I said, I’m not one to judge, but these ‘boat people’ seem to be getting everything handed to them. Maybe we really should put them on the next cruise-liner, just like the one they arrived on, and shove them off to some other nice place. But wait, that’s not an option anymore, because with more Katarins and Grezjus around the world than there are Maltese in Malta, they will probably find themselves in the same predicament wherever they go.