Unfortunately, as with most other things, the discussion over what the country should do with illegal immigrants has got off on the wrong foot. What is essentially a practical political problem has been inflated into a racial, cultural and an ideological one. Squashed between Norman Lowell’s racist rants and some of the NGOs equally naïve rants about abolishing detention centres, sane and rational policy making on the issue is having a hard time to see the light of day.

I am consciously calling these unfortunate people illegal immigrants not “irregular” as some are doing of late. Political correctness and woolly euphemisms will help neither Malta as a country nor the immigrants themselves. Anyone who comes to Malta by breaking the law, no matter how legitimate the reason to do so, remains someone who has broken the law. And in this sense, he or she has no automatic rights beyond anyone else who has broken the same law.

Let’s start with the basic fact. Over the last three years, around 3,600 illegal immigrants have landed on our shores. Relatively speaking, that makes Malta the country with the largest intake of illegal immigrants in Europe. In addition, this country has the second highest population density in the world, second only to Singapore. Unlike most European countries, the problem of illegal immigration is in everyone’s face, all the time.

Whatever one’s views and political stripes, this is a fact of life which cannot be pushed aside. No amount of heated neo-fascist rhetoric or naïve liberal cant from the NGOs can wish this simple fact about illegal immigration away. It would be grossly ill-advised not to expect Maltese people faced with this massive influx to go about their life as if nothing is happening. Indeed, to ignore people’s sentiments, feelings and even prejudices is to invite a reactionary backlash that will eventually shock everyone when it’s too late.

A few years back, France risked electing the extreme right winger Le Pen to the Presidency because for years the cosmopolitan and sophisticated French ignored the reaction to Muslim and Arab immigration beyond the map of the Paris Metro. Today, the two main political parties in Britain are falling over each other trying to come across as the ones with the “firmest” stand on the immigration problem.

In Malta, whose population thrives and lives off an “us and them” mentality, it is even more likely that reaction will take on uglier and more irrational forms. In a country where a sleepy hamlet of 500 souls comes into its own over one pique or another – over saints, band clubs, football teams and what not – the temptation to view a Muslim woman wearing a hijab or a black African man in fake Nike or Gucci attire as “them” is no temptation at all. It is the most natural thing to do.

In this light, it makes more sense to put an end to the great divide between those who supposedly love immigrants and those who supposedly hate them. It is a political and cultural cul-de-sac which leads to no viable and sustainable solution. Politics is about concrete responses to real problems. Loving or hating illegal immigrants is not a form of politics. It is just a sixth form pre-lunch break debating society which satisfies the speakers but practically no one else. It is certainly not the stuff that a national policy can be based on.

The search for solutions, if it is to be genuine and not jingoistic or short-sighted, can never be allowed to stray from the facts. I am not a politician, and I certainly do not envy Minister Tonio Borg who is saddled with coming up with the answers. But I suggest that no policy is to be taken seriously unless it provides some sort of an answer to the following issues:

• The proportion of illegal immigrants that is currently being granted (a) refugee status (b) humanitarian aid status

• The cost to taxpayers to maintain each illegal immigrant in detention

• The basis on which humanitarian aid status is granted

• Government and private

sector programmes for integrating those who have the legal right to live here

• Sources of foreign aid, particularly EU funds, to help Malta deal with the problem in all its aspects

• The Maltese army’s legal capacity to prevent the problem from becoming a problem

• The government’s ability to negotiate repatriation agreements with other countries, mainly Libya

• Government and NGO programmes to create better community relations and prevent a racist and cultural backlash.

These are the issues that need to be dealt with and resolved. The problem of illegal immigration is neither a love nor a hate story. No serious contributor to the debate can sit around with a daisy in hand, dreamily picking petals singing ‘I love illegal immigrants’, ‘I love them not’.

[email protected]