A Spanish national, living, working and paying taxes in Malta and holder of a Maltese ID card has written in to this newspaper, claiming that he was made to pay more for a bus ticket than a Maltese national.

The treatment of this person is pretty much indicative of the resistance and hostility that Malta sometimes has towards other nationalities, even though they live and work amongst us, and as we mentioned, pay taxes here.

This is not the first time that such discrimination has taken place. Many may say: “So what, it’s a bus ticket,” but that is not the point.

There are a good many people who have complained to this newspaper over the years, particularly since the influx of foreign (mostly European) I-gaming sector workers. Some have been denied access to hire-purchase deals on cars, while others have been asked to fork out heavy deposits for phones and the like.

But it goes beyond money. What the Maltese people (and in particular businesses) fail to grasp is that if European people come to work here and pay taxes into our system, then they have rights and deserve respect.

In many ways, they are treated as second-class citizens, often with a good dose of the green eyed monster piled in the age old, “They are foreign, they don’t think like us”.

The same attitude also extends to those Maltese nationals who are of mixed parentage – the ‘trueblood’ Maltese are often very quick in telling such people (although they have lived here for years and are perhaps more Maltese than the Maltese) that they should just “go back to where they came from” when they share an opinion, or dare to complain about the way things are here.

It has been seven years since we joined the European Union. Being an EU member does not just mean being able to travel freely across borders and being able to tap into EU budget funds. It means embracing a holistic way of life across the continent and that also means accepting foreigners in our midst, whether they are Romanian, Bulgarian, British, Italian or mixed Maltese heritage. It means that as a nation, while we are still very much Maltese, we are also European and it is about time that we started acting so.

Malta has always traditionally welcomed foreigners, especially in our old trading days hundreds of years ago. Perhaps the Colonialist times, coupled with early resentment of money-flush tourists in the early 1970s have shaped our attitudes towards foreigners. But in 2011, as fully-fledged EU members, it is about time that we dragged ourselves, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.