To realise how far the immigration issue has grown since the end of the Second World War, and continued to grow unabated in the more recent years, just take a look at the line-ups of the national teams taking part in the current Euro 2008 championships, being held in Austria and Switzerland.

The German national team, for example, includes three players (out of a total of 23) who were born to Polish parents who migrated to Germany. One of them, Podolski, did not even celebrate when he scored against his country of origin.

The Swiss side also has three players who have Turkish origins and, again, one of them, Yakin, did not celebrate when he scored against Turkey. Other countries taking part in the competition have players who were born and raised in other countries, but who have been “naturalised” to form part of the national team of the country they have been living in for a number of years.

Today it is not even a surprise to see players of a dark complexion who play for the traditionally-blonde northern European countries. France and Holland have for long had players of African and Caribbean origin in their ranks. Italy and Poland have their “Argentinean” and “Brazilian” players too. In the latter case, Guerreiro does not even speak Polish.

But the immigration phenomenon is not only a matter of players crossing continents. It is also Europeans moving from one country to another and settling down there to form their families, and “changing” nationality. Their origins are often “betrayed” by the surnames – for example, Ibrahimovic is clearly not of Swedish origin, but he plays for Sweden, and Gomez has Spanish roots but he plays for Germany.

All this is further proof of the globalisation of the world we are living in, and that the immigration issue is part and parcel of our way of life. It should be accepted as such, because there will always be people who want to change their lifestyle in search of a better deal.

There are some differences, however, in the way immigrants are treated. The players mentioned earlier and many others who are representing the country they have emigrated to (and not their country of origin) are considered as heroes because they are providing a solid service. They are contributing to their “new” country through scoring goals or preventing them and, if they have been selected in the national squad, are considered to be better than other players who may have lived in that same country all their life.

But then there are many more immigrants who are not welcome in the country they moved to, and are often a target of racial or ethnic problems. To remain within the Euro 2008 sphere, the Italy-Romania match played last Friday was considered to be a risky match for the three points at stake and also because of the political problems that exist between the two nations due to the growing number of Romanians moving to Italy.

Malta has not been spared any of this. In football terms, there have been players who have been naturalised as Maltese although they were not born here. We have welcomed their participation in the national team and shared their joy when they scored or played a good game.

And yet there is another side of the coin, because we do not accept the many more migrants who come over on leaking boats. We are not happy when another boatload is brought to shore because it is stretching our resources and using our tax money.

But it will be hard to bring immigration under control. People have moved around since time immemorial and they will not be stopping now.