Malta’s three independent newspapers – including Times of Malta – last month took a principled stand jointly calling on the government to review the arbitrary system of temporary humanitarian protection. More than 1,000 migrants holding the so-called temporary humanitarian protection new (THPn) status risked losing their benefits and becoming subject to deportation from October 31 unless they procured a passport from their country of origin, a condition largely outside their own control.

The government has reconsidered its position and concluded that migrants with THPn status will continue to enjoy the same benefits in Malta after October irrespective of whether or not they manage to get identity documents from their notoriously difficult countries of origin.

While this decision is to be welcomed on humanitarian grounds, Home Affairs and National Security Minister, Carmelo Abela, denied it was a reversal of policy that “regularised” the position of migrants with THPn status. Regularising failed asylum seekers could send the wrong message about access by irregular migrants to Europe and was a grey area both for Malta and the European Union. He said the government would be deciding on “new administrative processes” to replace THPn status in due course.

There can be little doubt that THPn status migrants fall into the greyest of grey categories under the protection rules in place. Most of those in this category have been working here and paying their dues to society through national insurance contributions for several years. Many have integrated well into society and even brought up their children here.

Temporary humanitarian protection is a local form of administrative protection given to individuals who are neither exposed to personal danger in their own country nor fall within any of the categories specified by the 1951 Refugee Convention as deserving of “refugee status” or of “subsidiary protection” under EU directives. The judgment the Refugees Commissioner has to make in granting the status is whether there are any extenuating humanitarian grounds for temporary protection (say, for unaccompanied children or for medical or other humanitarian reasons).

THPn was the category which had been given to rejected asylum seekers who had arrived before 2008. They had proved they were living in Malta and working legally, fulfilling certain criteria. Anyone who did not meet the criteria was classified as a failed asylum seeker and, therefore, subject to deportation.

Public concern has understandably focused on the deportation of families, many of whom have been here for several years and whose Malta-born children were, to all intents and purposes, stateless. This has led to calls for the children of failed asylum seekers to be granted Maltese citizenship and, in some cases, for all migrant families who have integrated in Malta to be allowed to acquire citizenship.

The government is right to review its administrative processes on THPn. It should think through its policies from first principles, including those on citizenship for refugees and families of failed asylum seekers or those who through no fault of their own have been in Malta for a long time and are fully integrated here.

Any government is right to adhere to the principal that failed asylum seekers should be deported once all available means of redress have been extinguished because it is an important plank of immigration policy to discourage economic migration and protect genuine refugees.

However, it must also temper that policy by ensuring that its administration of immigration policy is both firm and fair, combining humanitarian compassion with adherence to international law.