There are many days when I feel proud to be Maltese. And there are other days when I am deeply ashamed. Two weeks ago, I was extremely proud of the way a group of NGOs, made up mostly of  people about the same age as Malta's Prime Minister, took immediate steps to alert the European Court of Human Rights to Malta's unilateral intention forcibly to return a group of male, Somali irregular immigrants without even hearing their plea for asylum.

I have been deeply ashamed of the national reaction to the Prime Minister's readiness to implement a “push-back” policy on migrants arriving from Libya and the threat to veto unrelated decisions in the European Council unless Malta's plea for burden-sharing on irregular immigration is heeded. The unintended consequence of the government's action has been an outpouring of racist and xenophobic bile of which any country that calls itself civilised and Christian should be heartily ashamed.

Irregular migration is a problem of great complexity and a human tragedy on a global scale. It is a problem which has confounded countries far larger than Malta and defeated the ingenuity of governments far more experienced than ours.

Irregular immigration is not a new problem for Malta. It is one which has been evolving for the last eleven years. The Prime Minister and his advisers have had time to consider the issue in depth. Instead, a full-blown domestic and international crisis was created, even though the number of asylum-seekers reaching Malta's shores were no higher than the average of previous years and Malta's capacity to cope was not over-stretched.

The Prime Minister was right to rail against the EU's lack of willingness to contemplate a fairer system of  burden-sharing for countries, like Malta, which find themselves unable to absorb a huge influx of irregular immigrants. But he was wrong to suppose that by precipitating an international humanitarian incident he would receive the support he desires. Every country in Europe is suffering a backlash against immigration. To persuade the other twenty-seven countries of the EU that Malta's needs are unique, he should have embarked on a diplomatic offensive to build a network of like-minded leaders ready to discuss constructively the inequity of the current situation.

Instead, the Prime Minister managed to reverse an undoubtedly flawed, but essentially ethical, policy for dealing with the intractable problems of irregular immigration through the central Mediterranean of the last ten years (Eritrea in 2002 was an aberration) by one which is wrong on humanitarian grounds, illegal, diplomatically unsound and unlikely to advance Malta's plea for mutual support from other EU countries.

Four key principles should guide an ethical immigration policy for Malta. The first is that Malta should offer fair, just and humane treatment of irregular immigrants in line with its international obligations. It is a long-standing signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees and has signed a number of other international agreements. It is honour-bound to respect them. This is why the decision to push-back asylum-seekers in the face of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights was so ill-judged.

The second principle is that there should be well-ordered procedures and practices established for dealing with asylum-seekers. Malta's structures have taken a long time to build. With the exception of the Office of the Refugee Commissioner, they are still well short of the desired standard. While the policy on detention is the right one, on balance, for Malta, the accommodation centres in which asylum-seekers are held are woefully inadequate. They are invariably over-crowded. While the concept of introducing a civilian Detention Service was the right one, the army and police still fill the majority of posts of responsibility and all members of the force, without exception, are inadequately trained. Consequently, the treatment of asylum-seekers falls far below the humane standards that should apply. Malta's open accommodation centres also require expansion and an injection of funding to offer acceptable levels of care.

The third principle is that Malta should actively encourage the social inclusion (integration) of asylum-seekers who are eligible for humanitarian protection. At any one time, Malta is host to about 5000 black African immigrants. They use Malta's medical and social services and their children go to local schools. Many are employed and have an economic stake in Malta which should be encouraged. The ghettoisation, which is already happening, should be actively avoided. The wave of racism which the Prime Minister's populist action unleashed – and which the Church has lamentably failed to reject firmly enough - has made this objective harder to accomplish.

Nevertheless, there is a need, which the previous administration ducked, to introduce a comprehensive and far-reaching programme of integration. To do this will require courageous leadership from the Prime Minister personally and a concerted campaign of education to expunge the inherent racism and xenophobia of an island which, unusually in Europe, has never before experienced an influx of immigrants on this scale.

The fourth principle is the orderly repatriation of those ineligible for humanitarian protection or those who can be relocated to other European countries. This is the most difficult challenge confronting Malta. It is the issue which triggered the Prime Minister's extraordinary reaction a fortnight ago, with limited, possibly counter-productive, results. This is the area where diplomacy might work, but threats ring hollow.

It was therefore encouraging to see that in the immediate wake of the initial debacle the Prime Minister held talks on the issue with the Italian Prime Minister, and the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security has now done what should have been tried in the first place and had talks with the EU Commission. While nothing tangible came out of the talks, “additional measures to expedite the repatriation of those whose applications for asylum have been rejected” have been promised and the Commission's 'Annual Relocation Forum' will be organised “after the summer” (the EU's sense of urgency clearly does not extend to interrupting the summer holidays) “to discuss national asylum systems and the voluntary transfer of refugees across EU countries”.

So, not much for the government to show for its unnecessarily heavy-handed reaction to the first wave of irregular immigrants, except the stark realisation perhaps that diplomacy with twenty-seven other EU countries on a subject of such complexity and sensitivity was always going to be a heavy slog.     

The key lesson from all this is two-fold: first, there are no quick fixes available; and secondly, Malta needs to get its diplomatic skates on. There should be a concerted diplomatic offensive aimed at missions across Europe to rally support for Malta's unique predicament. Malta should itself come up with specific proposals for a fair relocation policy. Maltese ingenuity, which inspired the seminal UN Law of the Sea conference almost fifty years ago, should be directed now to finding an equitable formula for Europe's relocation policy, starting a debate based on possible solutions, rather than empty threats of using the country's veto.

I am confident the Prime Minister we voted into office five months ago has the stature, imagination and intelligence to rise above the populist tendencies displayed thus far. An ethical policy on immigration is a vital underpinning to success.