We are coming to find out facts about a new situation that has developed in our society - i.e. people living in garages. Numbers are mentioned - 400, according to one version - but the whole situation merits a deeper analysis and a look ahead at the years to come.

We are an open society which has seen the population grow faster in these last years thanks to people coming to live in Malta from their own country. We are not speaking here about migrants but rather of people who relocate to Malta legally, from other EU countries and even from outside the EU.

This trend is set to continue. If there are 40,000 foreigners living in Malta now, there's nothing to stop the number going up by a further 50,000 in the coming years. And that figure is a conservative one.

Where will all these people live? What will be the impact of these new inhabitants on the infrastructure of the island, on the roads, on the utilities?

The stories we are reading on our media speak of Maltese citizens forced to live in garages or other insalubrious accommodation because of the high rents being demanded. This trend is set to increase. Rents will keep going up and only a massive effort by the government to provide social accommodation can slow down the trend.

Even so, word on the streets says that even people working for betting companies, who have a better salary than most Maltese, are finding it difficult to pay for the rents that are being asked in certain parts of the island. Some are finding that living in Malta is not so advantageous as it seemed some years ago. Some who have lived here for some years are already going back to their country. But others will come, attracted by the same mirage that brought wave after wave to these shores.

As the Maltese sub-proletariat increases, as it has done these past years, more and more people will end up living in garages, to the detriment of their health. And as more and more foreigners come to Malta, attracted by the mirage of easy living and available jobs, they too will be forced underground into garages.

Already, we are seeing entire localities (such as St Paul's Bay) develop into ghettos with different communities living side by side and with increasing problems with regards to law and order, faced by few police with inadequate means.

This government cannot, and will not, stop this trend for it relies on cheap imported labour to boost our economic growth - this has been admitted time and again by key government figures. No Maltese will accept to do work that is paid as these foreigners get.

So as more foreigners come to Malta, our infrastructural problems will increase and multiply and, since we are building for high rents, more and more people will be forced to live wherever they can find. Maltese subproles will be fighting dirt cheap foreigners to gain access to subterranean garages. That is the shape of things to come.