Flood of desperate migrants see Malta as stepping stone

Letter from Valletta: Dame Winter, armed with squalls and rough seas, is reducing the number of illegal African immigrants making the perilous crossing in rickety boats to Maltese shores. So far 1,700 have arrived this year, on top of 1,800 in 2005. The newcomers are incarcerated in guarded camps located in disused schools and former British army barracks for a year while applications for asylum and refugee status are considered.

At present 1,800 are held in closed facilities, criticised by the EU as substandard. Confining them to camps is placing a major strain on the small Maltese army of only 1,800 soldiers. Another 1,000 immigrants live in open camps and have the right to work, but complain that there are no jobs. Both groups receive free housing and food, straining the country's finances. Maltese argue that tax money is being spent on immigrants instead of being invested to provide retirement benefits.

The number of arrivals is small when compared to the 24,000 who so far have sailed to Spain this year, five times the 2005 figure. But for Malta, the third most densely populated country in the world and the smallest member of the EU with just 404,000 citizens, the influx amounts to a huge imposition and a heavy burden. Malta's annual rate of migrant arrivals stands at about 0.5 per cent of its total population and 1 per cent of its GDP is being spent to care for migrants.

Maltese citizens and politicians make the point that the flood of desperate people began only after the country entered the EU in May 2004 and that the vast majority do not want to stay in Malta but to go on to the European mainland. While there are some Egyptians, Eritreans and Somalis, most immigrants come from the states of east and central Africa.

Valletta is pressing the EU to share the responsibility for caring for and relocating the immigrants, half of whom in 2004 and 2005 were granted humanitarian protection or refugee status. Malta has the second highest rate of applications for asylum in the EU. In September, the EU allocated an additional €1.3 million to compensate Malta and pledged another €540,000 to finance sea and air patrols.

Clearly the EU is taking Malta's predicament seriously: in 2005 Malta received just €180,000 in assistance.

Early this month the budgets committee of the European Parliament adopted a proposal, put forward by Malta, for the establishment of an EU agency for migration and asylum and to base it on the island.

The agency is to conduct research and provide advice to member states and EU bodies with the aim of developing a common policy on migration. This agency's work will complement the activities of Frontex, the EU's border control organisation which has so far unsuccessfully tried to cut the flow of migrants to Spain.

Malta and Italy are calling for the creation of a joint naval patrol force to intercept unregistered vessels carrying migrants from Libya. While Valletta and Rome would like to force these boats to return to Libya, lawyers argue this would be a violation of the law of the seas unless the migrants' right of asylum is respected. Nevertheless, EU ministers, who met early this month, agreed to speed up plans to set up "rapid border intervention teams", surveillance arrangements, and a Mediterranean coastal network to pick up migrants in international waters.

Valletta and Rome are also pressing for tough measures against the criminal networks involved in people smuggling and cuts in aid to countries that do not try to stem the tide of emigrants bound for Europe. Malta, France, Italy and Greece have obtained agreement that EU members proposing to grant collective amnesty to illegal workers - as Spain did last year for 580,000 - must inform others ahead of time. This decision contributed to the mass migration from north Africa to the Canary Islands over the past few months.

During a recent conference on the achievement of millennium development goals in Africa, Jean-Pierre Elong Mbassi, a leading African civil society figure, said emigration is a consequence of rapid urbanisation and pointed out that Europe had dealt with its poor through migration to the Americas, and called upon the EU to accept African immigrants for the next 15 years.

European Mediterranean basin countries are unlikely to agree, but are ready to boost aid to African countries which are prepared to keep their people at home.

EU ministers are due to discuss how to tackle African emigration at a conference in Tripoli next month.