Since 1 January 2005, 578 irregular immigrants were granted refugee status or humanitarian protection, Commissioner for Refugees Charles Buttigieg said in his annual report published yesterday.

Of the 578, 34 were granted refugee status while 544 were granted humanitarian protection. In 2005, the Refugee Commissioner’s Office closed 1,238 cases which involved people from 38 countries.

During 2005, the office turned down the applications of 594 people while 66 people had already withdrawn their application by the time the office started working on their case.

The Refugee Commission-er’s Office started off the year with 449 pending applications and 141 applications for refugee status. Mr Buttigieg said the office was still processing the applications filed by 75 people.

Moreover, there are 692 people who are still waiting for their application to be processed. These people all form part of the 1,822 who landed in Malta during 2005.

In his report, Mr Buttigieg says that since January 2002, a total of 158 people were granted refugee status while 1,543 were granted humanitarian protection.

A large majority of the people arriving in Malta on boats are who are usually rescued in the nick of time by the authorities would have no documents. Most of the time, he said, the amount of work involved to determine whether the applicant was really from the country they were claiming to hail from.

He said that the ‘oldest’ applications which still have to be processed are of those immigrants who arrived in Malta at the end of July. These are the application on which the office is focusing it efforts.

Mr Buttigieg explained that a good number of the applications received this year were complicated and took more time to process than those application considered as easy. In some cases, to make them even more difficult, the immigrants submit documents which are not authenticated and verifications would have to be made.

He said that when a group of irregular immigrants arrive on the same boat, their applications are processed together, except for those involving families with children, pregnant women or cases involving people with medical conditions.