Going back about 15 years ago, people from Africa used to enter Malta on their passports and then seek out racketeers who used to doctor stamps on passports to extend their stay – against a fee of course.

This was back in the day when migrants used to be shackled together, hauled to court (sometimes walking from the police depot in Floriana) and unceremoniously deported. When the numbers began to escalate, the police immigration department carried out numerous raids and caught those who were forging the passport stamps.

Others took their place, but the police tapped into the grapevine and eventually stamped it all out.

Fast forward to 2015, and we now have the same problem. This last week has shown that with border controls in place, the dragnet caught no less than seven people who tried to get into Malta with fake paperwork.

The government has said that it is closing in on a Somali national who was the man to go to. Everything was fixed up from outside Malta. The government estimates that some 200-odd people got into Malta this way, but that is more than likely a very conservative estimate.

Schengen travel was a boon for Maltese nationals, in terms of being able to travel through Europe without having to go through border controls. But in this day and age, when we do not know who is who and who has terrorist links, border controls are what the man on the street is calling for.

The PM has already said that the Schengen agreement will be suspended in Malta until there are ‘developments’.

Speaking during the Valletta Migration Summit, EU President Donald Tusk said that the Schengen Agreement may be saved, but only if Europe acts quickly. But how can it be saved?  It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack when people have free movement.

But aside from the forgeries which are taking place here, the government also needs to act on the Algeria Visa scam. While the PM was thorough in dealing with the issue of Schengen, he sought to deflect negative attention in the Algeria issue, saying that the Algerian authorities “laughed it off”. We find this to be quite disturbing. Malta’s security, and the fact that 7,000 visa applications and residency permit applications out of a total of 14,000 this year (which is already very high) is not something which should be laughed off.

First of all, how can the Algerians laugh it off? The documents were issued by the Maltese government, and not Algeria. And secondly, does the government not get the seriousness of what is going on? There are some 7,000 people, who have paid kickbacks in some form or manner, to get into Malta and travel on to who knows where on the continent, on a Maltese visa.

The world has changed drastically in the past weeks. Security concerns have never been higher. While the government is right in tightening the noose on the racket going on here in Malta, it should also tighten the noose in Algeria, and launch investigations into other consulates, for that matter.