Britain’s Home Office Minister for Immigration, Tony McNulthy, was here on a flying visit earlier this week. His message to Malta? “Those who are good at criticising would do better to come on board and seek a solution. It’s easier to criticise, but it’s less easy to roll up your sleeves, to get down to work and to try and find a solution.” Contrary to the perception that some may have, he said, there is no “magic solution” or “panacea” for the problem of illegal immigration. The Times headline spelled out the gist of what he said: ‘Stop complaining and help find a solution, Malta told’.

This is the trouble: our politicians, and the people who elected them, and who are threatening not to do so again, are behaving as though they have nothing to do with all this, that it’s not Malta’s problem but somebody else’s. From where did they get this curious idea?

I see its roots in the notorious Maltese expression, “Sorry ta’, imma jien m’ghandix naqsam,” or the even more aptly expressed “Jien x’ghandi x’naqsam?!” These phrases don’t convey only a reluctance to get involved, but the person’s genuinely-held belief that whatever doesn’t concern him or her directly doesn’t concern him or her at all. With their declared approach to the immigrants being brought ashore, they are taking Issa ahna x’ghandna x’naqsmu? to fresh heights – perhaps that should be ‘lows’.

The subtext to whatever they have said so far is this: it’s not our problem; we’re just the small island that happened to be in the way; deal with this yourselves, before we find some other way of butting out; it’s your problem. But why is it ‘their’ (who are ‘they’?) and not ours?

Now Mr McNulthy has reminded us that yes, it is Malta’s problem, too, and that sulking, foot-stamping, threatening and attention-seeking are hardly the mature way to go about things. It’s a great pity that, if his words filtered through at all to the harshest of the armchair ‘put-them-on-planes-and-send-them-back-or-meet-them-at-sea-and- give-them-enough-diesel-to-go-to-Italy’ critics, then their reaction is most likely to have been: “X’jigi dal-Ingliz u jghidilna x’naghmlu!”

Can’t you just see it and hear it? Unless, of course, you had that precise reaction yourself. Suddenly, to the armchair racists who seem to have nothing better to do than write letters to The Times (which doesn’t appear to realise the implications of publishing this kind of material), Anglo-Saxon Englishmen are no longer the acme of racial purity and whiteness. Strange – one minute they’re thrilled to be mistaken for an Englishman, and the next minute it’s a case of “Who does he think he is, coming here and telling us what to do.”

* * *

There’s one kind of illegal immigrant that the armchair racists, the men at least, don’t mind at all. She’s white, she’s East European, she’s 25 years old, very good-looking, and so desperate for a passport out of her home country that she’ll do anything in the hope of a

marriage licence or risky concubinage.

There must be a couple of love matches among the many pairings of this nature, but when you see somebody who looks and behaves like that creature in the old Trog cartoons, in proud possession of a life-size Barbie, then – how can I put this tactfully? – the natural conclusion is that the life-size Barbie is as desperate as the North Africans in those boats.

No, that kind of illegal immigrant is all right. She’s white, and best of all, she’s so scared that you’ll throw her out that she’ll do anything to please, like a medieval servant.

* * *

Amid the usual daily plethora of emails trying to sell me Viagra and Valium, I found something unusual last Monday, so I opened it. It read: “Hello my hope! I am not sure you get this message but if you got I want you to know that I want to travel to your country to work in two weeks and I just want to meet right man. I live in Russia and my goal is to leave this country because it is impossible to live here for young pretty woman. If you have not wife or girlfriend, maybe we could try to meet? My name is Elana, I am 25 years old, please write to me directly to my mail (and here ‘Elana’ gives a Russian internet address). Email I am writing from right now is not mine. Make sure you write your personal address. See you soon.”

My first instinct was to reply and let her know that I am not a lesbian. My second was to tell her that it’s becoming impossible to live here for young pretty women, many of whom are departing quickly and leaving the Maltese men to the East Europeans, who are welcome to them. But of course, I didn’t, because ‘Elana’ doesn’t exist.

The message was mass-mailed under the sort of fake name used to sell Viagra from a temporary web-hosting domain. ‘Elana’ would be a decoy used by people-traffickers, who get these women out of their country under false pretences and work them as white slaves.

It’s not only the Africans who want to leave their country whatever it takes, despite what the primitive racists in our midst might think, and it’s not only the Africans who have corrupt and psychopathic traffickers in human beings. Anybody who sees Europe, Australia and North America as the holy grail of life is vulnerable prey.

I wonder how many Maltese men jumped at the chance to reply to ‘Elana’. I’d be thrilled to find out that an armchair racist or two did.

* * *

Well, I don’t know about this business with the Film Commissioner and the interview he gave to The Times.

First of all, it can’t have been that exciting, because these things are always yawn-material. And if it is the principle of the thing, then please will somebody tell me what that principle might possibly be? We were told that the Minister for Films vetoed the interview’s publication, and then there was all this hue and cry because he did so – but I can’t understand why all these people are getting their knickers in a twist.

Once somebody gives an interview, nobody – and that includes the person who gave the interview, still less his or her boss or superior – can veto its publication except the editor of the newspaper.

All the angry superior can do is reprimand or sack the disobedient interviewee (if it’s really that serious), but the point is that the angry superior has control only over his or her subordinates. He or she does not have control over any newspaper which he or she does not own or edit.

All The Times had to do was go right and ahead and publish the interview, regardless of the protests of the Film Commissioner and his minister. The Times should know this, so I thought this ‘it’s-not-fair-the-minister-won’t-let-us-publish-the-interview’ attitude to be rather strange.

If the newspaper took a decision not to publish, so that the Film Commissioner would not have to suffer the consequences, then this was very altruistic of them, but I hardly think that was the motive. It’s coming across as more of a case of not wanting to displease the minister, or a desire to kick up a storm in a thimble in August, when there’s nothing much else to write about. Again, that’s very unusual – so I’m sure there are some crossed wires somewhere.

* * *

I couldn’t understand what that on-line survey was about, either, with the question ‘Should journalists have direct access to senior government executives?’ Where does ‘should’ come into it? What an odd view of journalism and reportage some people have.

I know that in this country there are very many people who believe ‘work’ to be a code-word for having everything delivered on a plate, but there are limits. Now we have journalists deciding that it is their right – and polling people to see whether they agree (they apparently do) – to be able to sit at their desk and call up any senior government executive for a leisurely quizzing.

Everywhere else in the developed world, journalists deal with ministerial spokespeople and communications officers, while working hard at cultivating a couple of senior sources, which they treasure and whose anonymity they protect.

This is more so, not less so, the more highly developed the country is, and the more sophisticated its media. I suppose our people imagine that ‘senior government executives’ in London, Paris and Washington spend their time taking calls from the world’s media, and more to the point, that their political superiors allow them to do so.