Immigration seems to have returned as a subject of debate with a vengeance in Parliament this week. It is of course both a contentious as well as a sensitive subject.

It is a sensitive subject for at least two reasons. The first was that both the government and the opposition absolutely ignored the problem until the public meetings of the ANR and those of Azzjoni Nazzjonali attracted enough attention for the subject to enter into the public domain. The second reason was that, not knowing what to do, or unwilling to take the unpalatable action that was necessary, both the main parties only paid lip service to it right up to the last election. The third reason was that when France was desperate to conclude its Presidency successfully, Malta ran shy of using the situation to press home its advantage. The reason that had we done so would have alienated other member states who would then refuse to help us has been proved to hold no water.

We played our part

All the running has been done by Azzjoni Nazzjonali in the teeth of a clear agreement by all the remaining parties never to refer to it or its programme. When Azzjoni Nazzjonali called Frontex a joke – and I repeated this on CNN – it turned out to be true. When Azzjoni Nazzjonali said that too many people were entering Malta, its claim was supported by the PM himself when he referred to it as an invasion while talking to foreign journalists. Jacques Barrot too had to admit this. When Azzjoni Nazzjonali said and wrote that voluntary burden sharing had no future, as all the EU member states had immigration problems of their own, it was derided but was proved right yet again. Only this week France confirmed the divide that exists between Malta and the other member states. True, Italy and Spain are facing equally massive invasions, but compared to Malta they are so huge that the landings there are the bite of a flea on the thick skin of an elephant. By paying millions of euros to Libya, Italy has managed to lesson the migratory impact on its own shores. Malta benefitted from this of course without attracting any opprobrium. But we cannot take cheap rides on the backs of others for ever.

The EU is now paying the price for its short-sighted policies, when instead of aiding its own families to grow and prosper, it went for the cheap (as it then seemed) importation of people whose culture is so different that integrating them into the European one was bound to be problematic. And it has. But we are living in politically correct times. The EU has spent millions trying to habilitate the Roma, when everywhere I visited I was told this was almost impossible for their culture was too strong. For pointing out the obvious, Azzjoni Nazzjonali was ostracised. But it still achieved its aim of alerting people to the seriousness of the problem and in so doing forced the two parties in parliament to take action. That is good enough for us.

In the meantime, the PL had come to realise that this was a subject that was worth taking up and Joseph Muscat referred to the large numbers coming in as a red light: That earned him the condemnation of the PM who revealed that there had been an agreement between the PN and the PL not to use the problem as a political football. Was the citizen considered in this agreement? Can anyone really believe in these two parties when they squabble over who gave Malta its real independence, when they both kept mum about an invasion in our own times and right under our very noses?

An amendment that leads to a roundabout

Now we are told that the new amendment to the Immigration Act will help all EU member states to repatriate those who for some reason or other fail to get asylum, or break the law, or in some way or another offer reason for deportation. But we are also told that in the absence of documentation, we do not know where to send them (deserves a big embarrassed smiley this). Nor do we know what to do with those whose countries are in the grip of nasty civil wars. What we do know is that we do not stand much chance of unloading them, legally anyway, onto our fellow member states in the EU.

Their politicians are listening to the voters who are telling them that they are now unhappy with the way the country is visibly filling up with illegal immigrants and having to pay for the many and varied problems they bring along with them. I don’t think in Europe these citizens are labeled as having migrated to the Far Right, as – always if he was reported correctly in a Sunday paper – PL leader Joseph Muscat suggested is the case in Italy, where according to him many workers have crossed over to swell the ranks of the Lega Nord.

Does all this mean that I and my colleagues don’t care about the pregnant women that were rescued in the teeth of a howling gale this week? Of course we do and we never claimed otherwise. Whether their own husbands do is another matter. That particular gale had been blowing all week, and Italy had been under torrential downpours for quite some time. Hardly the right conditions to venture out, especially when the risk of being turned back is so high now – unless of course they happen to land in Malta.

But then that is the strategy of the people traffickers who know only too well that the presence of women and children increases the chances of their being picked up. And while our country tries to confront its own growing social problems, it continues, knowingly or otherwise, to support human traffickers some of whom operate from our own shores. It seems that people traffickers have now joined drug traffickers when it comes to being successfully tracked down. The power boats they own must possess the qualities of stealth technology.

Malta: a unique island

All that readers need do is to look at Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s 10-point plan, (which preceded the one that Joseph Muscat seems to have put together from all available documentation), for them to read for themselves what our suggestions were. One of them was simply that immigrants be employed in order to pay for their upkeep as well as earning enough money to enable them to move on at the earliest opportunity. What they will Not find is a suggestion to kick the immigrants in the Open Centres out into the streets. The absence of daily illegal landings in no way has made the problem go away. I once said that Malta is alone in this matter (except for the limited help offered so far) and will remain so for at least two reasons.

The first is that there is no country on the continent of Europe with whom we can claim a blood relationship. Malta is the only island in the Mediterranean that is truly unique. The second is that the other member states of the EU cannot help us; their people will not let more hungry mouths come in to feed off them in times of recession. The problems of Africa have to be tackled in a different way; beginning by stopping global companies (and their own rulers) from plundering them any further and using the continent to take their toxic waste. Malta is guilty of neither sin and should not therefore pay for the sins of others.

But above all, we need to imitate all the other member states of the EU and learn to put our national interests first.

Josie Muscat is Leader Azzjoni Nazzjonali