I am writing this piece on behalf of at least half the educated people of these tiny islands who cannot bear to watch, hear or read any more nasty or self-righteous waffle about the illegal immigrants issue.
On the one hand there are those who want to shoot these illegal immigrants dead, or have other similar criminal intentions. These are the wicked ones who we should all shun, or try to educate out of their stupidity. A surprising number of people do express these views but they are not the moral or any sort of majority in this country. The fact that so many exist however is testimony to the levels of ignorance in this country, the superficiality of our religious beliefs, as well as showing up the huge cracks in our education system, because huge swathes of society don’t think, don’t read, don’t or can’t write, don’t appear to do anything other than attend to the basic human needs of eating, sleeping, having sex and working sometimes...
On the other hand, are the do goody wafflers whose hearts are undoubtedly in the right place, but who need to wake up now that it is finally becoming clear that these illegal immigrants, or quite a number of them particularly in recent months, are not all brave people who have trudged across Africa and then sailed from Libya. These are people who have been living in Libya illegally or otherwise for years. They board a big ship like our Gozo Channel ones and, when they near Malta, they get into little boats and make straight for the island quite deliberately.
The Italian Deputy PM was here this week and there was quite a lot of nice intentioned waffle again. He said, as a few have said here, that we cannot solve the problem completely while there are problems in Africa. He is right. But we cannot wait for the African economy to catch up with ours in order to take action. And action must consist of returning people safely from whence they came. After all it was the very same Italians who insisted on returning the illegal immigrants back to Malta because they had been in our waters. The Italians didn’t wait for the African economy to pick up, for wars in Africa to cease, for drought and starvation to be a thing of the past as they should be already. They sent them back here, which is hardly their country of origin. So with their actions the Italians acted differently to what they had waffled on about, and who can blame them?
The silent majority whose views I am trying to represent here are extremely worried about the problem, and quite rightly believe these people have no right to just sail into our country and expect citizenship, jobs and the like. They are not racists. They are right. This is the smallest country on earth, almost! What would all the waffle be about if 100 started arriving every day? 700 a week? 3,000 per month? 36,000 per year?
It was good that one minister
this week spoke about giving powers to the Commissioner for Refugees to deal more efficiently with abusive applications, but we have to ask why it took so long. It is also good that we are improving our services in general. It is a terrible burden but once they are here, we cannot leave them to rot or to starve. And it is very scary that those who are in charge of these services should actually be on the receiving end of abuse, filthy e-mails, dirty looks and the like.
But I cannot believe that modern technology cannot help us more in this area. Why can’t the EU fund a force to patrol our waters and make return them whence they came? Or as some sensible Europeans suggested, process the claims in Libya itself so that only the genuine refugees can come to Europe (and not to Malta first), if that is what Europe wants.
It might be what the EU wants. It might be what the UN decrees, but ordinary people everywhere know that Europe cannot be home to all disaffected and poor Africans. It is just pie in the sky to think so.
Borders have to be tightened and closed. It is not the first time in our history that being a small indefensible island militates against us. The wafflers can complain all
they like that this home of ours should be home to everyone. It cannot be. By allowing the problem to grow uncontroled we are in effect increasing racist sentiment in this country. Politicians who want to curb the growing racism have to be seen to be efficient and effective in stopping more from entering. It sounds tough but
it is not racist. It is common
sense. It is what right thinking people demand. We all derided and laughed off Norman
Lowell’s extremism a couple of years ago.
Today his predictions are coming true. Nobody is laughing and racism is growing. The middle way between wickedness and waffle must prevail. So far though only the two extreme opinions are being heard. It’s about time some realistic balance came into the debate, as well as some real and practical solutions. The voting public demands it, difficult though it will be to implement.