Malta’s fellow EU member states all agree, at least in principle, that something has to be done to help Malta cope with its seemingly endless tide of African asylum seekers – people who many times risk life and limb to accomplish the impossible in their quest for a better, safer life – if not for themselves, then for their children.

It is undeniable that Malta, as one of the European Union’s southern frontier states, has found itself in the midst of the brunt of the African exodus and, after a record number of migrant landings last year, clinched a global top spot in terms of per capita asylum applications.

According to a recent report by the UNHCR, over 2008 Malta entertained no less than 2,610 asylum applications – equating to an average of 6.4 asylum applications per 1,000 inhabitants, an 89 per cent increase over 2007. The influx compares with a 20 per cent increase across the whole of southern Europe and a mere six per cent increase in the whole of the European Union.

And the numbers are expected to climb even higher this year, for a number of reasons – not least of which is the drastic toll the economic crisis shrouding the world last year is taking on populations in the Horn of Africa, where a substantial amount of migrants finding themselves on Maltese shores hail from.

There is very little doubt that the vast majority of migrants arriving on Maltese shores had no initial intention of coming to Malta but, rather, found themselves here only by twist of geography or fate. In fact, almost all of Malta’s migrants consider their stay in Malta as a staging post for the European mainland, which is, in almost every case, both the original and end destination.

As such, Malta is bearing a disproportionate brunt of what is, essentially, a European problem. But in the meantime Europe is turning a consistently deaf ear and blind eye toward Malta’s plight – leading to a situation in which, out of 26 countries and a joint population of close to 500 million, only a handful have deemed it fit to resettle a handful of migrants each.

On quite the other hand, the United States has stepped in to provide Malta with the type of assistance it is so sorely lacking from its EU brethren. Yesterday morning the US permanent refugee resettlement programme reached a milestone. The 13 refugees that left Malta International Airport yesterday morning to forge new lives for themselves and their families in the United States, which incidentally has a smaller population than the EU and which has a host of its own illegal immigration woes, will see the programme reaching the 250 mark – just one year into the programme. And the numbers are growing, with the US having signalled it would be ready to resettle up to 30 refugees residing in Malta per month.

Imagination is a fine thing, so ponder for a moment if Malta’s fellow EU states were to match the American contribution to Malta’s migratory plight.

Simple arithmetic says that if all Malta’s fellow EU states were to follow the American lead, in the interest of the often vaunted European solidarity, they would take a total of 6,500 individuals with humanitarian protection status from Malta – far in excess of what would actually be required.

With some 2,500 migrants with varying types of humanitarian protection status residing outside of the country’s detention centres, and another 2,500 still in detention, another mathematical exercise shows all that would be needed from the EU would be a voluntary resettlement of some 95 refugees per member state, less than half the American annual contribution, to relieve Malta of the former group.

It is high time the EU follows suit and steps in to provide assistance, which has been shamefully absent, as, year by year, Malta’s burden of the migratory phenomenon becomes more disproportionate – at the very least in the interest of the solidarity the European Union is supposed to be about.