After years in the doldrums, our police service sprung into action between the months of August and October of two years ago. A good number of illegal and undocumented immigrants were flushed out of their hideouts in various localities in Malta, rounded up, and deported. In all probability, there are still hundreds more lurking around our islands that have yet to be detected and ordered out of our small territory.

These raids were intended to be the beginning of initiatives designed to combat irregular immigration, which has long been plaguing Malta, and aimed at relocating and extraditing undocumented people. These raids came at a time when the Opposition had been upping its hawkish rhetoric on irregular migrants, calling for the immediate deportation of foreign nationals who break the law and going so far as to suggest that the Armed Forces of Malta should become actively involved in law enforcement.

Immigrant is a term used to describe foreign nationals who enter our country for purposes of permanent resettlement. Our immigration laws do not classify "temporary workers" as immigrants. However, when temporary workers decide to settle permanently in our country, they are then reclassified as immigrants. In general, there are three broad categories of immigrants: voluntary migrants who come to join relatives already settled here or to fill particular jobs for which expertise may be lacking among our nationals; refugees and asylum seekers who enter the country to avoid persecution; and undocumented immigrants who enter the country illegally.

The term undocumented immigrant has been locally operationalized using certain factors. There are those who legally entered our country but remained after their visa or permit expired; those who received a negative decision on their refugee or asylum application but remained in the country; those who experienced changes in their socioeconomic position and could not renew their residence permit but remained in the country; those who used fraudulent documentation to enter the country or territory; and those who unlawfully entered the country or territory, including those who were smuggled.

It is thus that our anti-immigration policies and laws have re-emerged to address the growing and worrying migration of undocumented immigrants. There might be several factors that are finally leading to the implementation of immigration policies aimed at curbing illegal immigration, ostensibly but never admitted by local authorities, including political, racial, terrorism, and economic factors. Apart from other considerations, it would be worthwhile to conduct a study to assess and understand how these immigration policies and laws may affect both access to health services and health outcomes among undocumented immigrants.

Mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, may be present among adult undocumented immigrants and, even more concerningly, among undocumented children. Undocumented children surely experience significant trauma, and, in addition, they face unique challenges, including barriers to education along with anxiety over arrest, incarceration, and imprisonment of family members due to immigration status, leading to increased child trauma and harm.

While illegal immigration is a growing problem for Malta and should be fought with all possible legal means, the number of undocumented or ‘irregular’ migrant workers will never be brought down to zero and will remain a particularly vulnerable group. Most irregular migrants lack access to basic social protections and workers’ rights and are frequently victims of exploitative labour practices. They are also the subject of a great deal of political controversy, with most of our populace and policymakers calling for tough action to remove and return irregular migrants to their countries of origin.

Although the dominant public image of irregular migrants is that of free riders who take jobs from native workers and access public services without paying their fair share in taxes, the reality is likely to be more nuanced than this. Since most irregular migrants do not have access to social benefits, it is likely that a high proportion of them work in order to survive, suggesting that they may be having a significant impact on the economy through their contribution to the labour market. Irregular migrants are also consumers, which increases demand and generates economic growth through their spending.

Irregular migration does, however, pose a significant social and political challenge, even if its economic effects might not be as problematic as is often thought, and in my view, it is neither credible nor progressive for our government to tolerate large irregular migrant populations, not least because irregularity has negative consequences for irregular migrants themselves.

But neither is it feasible to reduce the problem to zero, as the Labour administration seems to want to do with the latest measures taken over the last few months. I believe that a better objective policy would be to implement a range of complementary measures to deter future irregular migration while taking a realistic approach to addressing the remaining and existing stock of irregular migrants.

The enforced return has a role to play in any government response to irregular migration. This is an uncomfortable but inevitable conclusion. That said, enforced return does not have to mean dawn raids, heavily publicised raids, arbitrary detention, or being taken in handcuffs to the plane, though sometimes it does come to that. Rather, it should involve convincing irregular migrants that return is going to be enforced and that the process cannot be endlessly spun out, but that within certain limits the system will always include scope for sorting out an individual’s affairs in our country and the availability of a package of financial help to aid reintegration in the home country.