Illegal Immigration in 2006

 

Today's Sunday Times carries a brief but interesting summary of the situation with regard to refugees and illegal immigrants over the past year, which I am reproducing in full:

Twenty-eight illegal immigrants were granted refugee status in 2006, while another 522 were given humanitarian protection, the Commission for Refugees' annual report shows.
A total of 637 requests for refugee status were turned down, however.
In a statement, the Refugee Commission said it had dealt with 4,477 cases since it started to operate in January 2002. Over 1,300 were Somalis.
The Refugee Office started off the year with 849 pending applications, and in the past 12 months determined the cases of 1,210 individuals from 39 countries. They include 887 individuals who arrived in Malta in 2005.
As of the end of this month, the office is still working on 211 cases and has 720 pending cases of foreigners who landed in Malta after June 20. This year a total of 23 people withdrew their application for refugee status.
The refugee office explained that the process of several individuals was prolonged because of complications - such as the lack of a passport or forged documentation. In other cases, the refugee office has to probe individuals to ascertain that they pertain to a particular country or creed.
Delays have also been caused by the shortage of interpreters for the diverse languages spoken by illegal immigrants.

The key figure here is '28'. That's the number of ascertained genuine refugees for 2006 (many of them would have arrived in 2005 or even earlier, while some of those who arrived in the Summer of 2006 are still being processed). These are the people to whom the Geneva Convention on refugees applies. The rest may be repatriated according to our own laws, but in reality they are staying anyway. The 522 granted 'humanitarian protection' have basically not qualified for refugee status under the Geneva Convention, although they come from certain difficult countries (it's probably Somalia for the vast majority of them). For these, and for the 637 whose cases were even weaker and who were refused outright, the only rational solution is humane but indefinite detention until they can be repatriated.

Detention is not meant to deter people from actually arriving in Malta or to punish them for doing so. It's merely part of the administrative process leading to repatriation. That it should be humane is important not just for moral reasons but also for our international image. That it should be indefinite is essential for its effectiveness. If people are in any case released after 18 months, as is happening now, then it all merely becomes a case of an 18-month quarantine period before being definitively admitted to live and work in Malta.

For anyone with any idea of Malta's demographics, it is evident that the annual addition of even around 500 immigrants predominantly from Muslim countries will lead to the creation of a substantial community in a single generation, with a demographic momentum that would be almost impossible to reverse in the long term. As the figure is in fact probably closer to 1000 per annum (as many of those whose application is refused outright are not in fact repatriated, and there are probably many others who arrive in Malta undetected and are not covered by the official statistics), the situation is probably even more dramatic than that. If it were to reach 2000 per annum, the figure assumed by Eurostat in its 2005 projections, the political independence of the Maltese people would be under threat in 2 generations, with Muslim immigrants and their descendants approaching a quarter of the population by 2050 and probably becoming a majority before the century is out.

and this . . .

 

This one isn't that harmless though

So this is what happens to loony lefties when they grow up . . .

 

At least he's harmless :)

Saddam's Fate

 

It's looking increasingly likely that Saddam's death sentence will be carried out after all - something I was personally not expecting. I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it. Saddam's crimes are undeniable but will his execution help stabilize the situation in Iraq? I suspect that it will make it even more difficult than it is now to reconcile the Sunnis and keep Iraq together.

On the other hand, I can't say I have mixed feelings about the impending fall of Mogadishu to Government and Ethiopian forces. It appears that the establishment of yet another terrorist paradise has been avoided, and with little bloodshed. I just hope that the Ethiopians leave as soon as the job is done and that the Government manages to eventually establish some form of order in the south.

Our Eastern Brethren

 

One of the news stories that I have been following in the past days has been the visit paid by the leaders of the three main Christian groupings in the UK to the Holy Land, and particularly the remarks made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which were widely reported in the British press. Essentially, Dr. Rowan Williams' main argument appears to be that Western and Israeli actions (Iraq and the Wall respectively) are primary reasons for the decline of Middle Eastern Christians.

About the Iraq war, of which I am no great fan, I will comment in other posts. What intrigued me most, however, is Dr. Williams' criticism of the West Bank Wall/Fence as a symbol of what is "deeply wrong in the human heart" and of a "fear of the other and the stranger which keeps all of us in one or another kind of prison". I find it very difficult to share Dr. Williams' views here. This barrier is not about some vague fear of the 'other'. It is about a very specific terrorist threat in a very specific political context. And the controversy that surrounds it (at least among those who accept that Israel needs to survive) is supposed to concern its route not its existence. Which brings me to my main subject, which is that Dr. Williams' intervention is probably meant to win brownie points with the local Muslims (which could be useful in gaining acceptance for local Christians) and possibly also to gain left-wing support for his Church back home. He is certainly not the only Christian leader to have adopted this approach, as Gardjola have recently pointed out. His Iraq article also supports this interpretation.

Now, I happen to think that the Western churches may be pretty much fighting for a lost cause in the Middle East. The chances of a general demographic revival of the Christian populations there seem to me to be rather remote at this stage. The only areas where this is conceivable (if still unlikely) are Mount Lebanon and the State of Israel. As far as the rest of the Middle East is concerned, emigration is probably not such a bad option, when the alternative is gradual assimilation and de-Christianization.

It appears, however, that our strategy has been to try and achieve the exact opposite. The territorial 'federalist approach' still promoted by some groups in Lebanon has been discouraged by the Vatican, which has preferred a less assertive political stance in Lebanon as a price for the community being granted a degree of religious freedom in the Middle East as a whole. Israel, the other safe haven, is barely tolerated by most Western churches (with the exception of American Evangelicals), partly for the same reason. All this in order to buy some more time for other Christian communities that have, for the most part, already disappeared. The Palestinian Christians are an example. Is it worthwhile for us to continue building our Middle Eastern policy around the survival of one church that at this stage has only a few tens of thousands of faithful (around 3% of the Palestinian population) left? So far, the strategy does not appear to have delivered strong results. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, one has to wait and see whether it will continue to apply the same approach after the personnel changes that the Pope has effected during the past year in the Secretariat of State (the replacement of Cardinal Sodano) and in the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (the replacement of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald).

The bottom line, I think, is that the less we meddle with the Middle Eastern Christians (either in the form of Iraq-style military intervention or in the form of Vatican-style political interference or even in the form of Archbishop of Canterbury-style moral posturing) the better it is for them. We may have already helped subvert their chances for independence in Lebanon. We are currently subverting the only state that offers them full religious freedom, which is Israel. Given the poor returns we have achieved so far, and given the obvious fact that governments are better suited to manage foreign policy than are churches, I would suggest that we let our Middle Eastern brothers run their own show politically, whether they get it right or not, and simply limit ourselves to providing plenty of material assistance and spiritual solidarity - plus a home to come to in the West should their position in the Middle East not turn out to be sustainable despite our 'best efforts'. It might also be a good idea to learn from their predicament and to do what we can to avoid ending up in the same situation, if it's not too late.

A Merry Christmas to all!

 

May you all have a most wonderful and peaceful Christmas!

Expensive Idealism

 

The UN has been in the news today, mainly due to Kofi Annan's controversial comments about Iraq (essentially to the effect that the Iraqis were better off in the days of the dictatorship) but also due to John Bolton's decision to quit his post.

Kofi Annan's personal views are not particularly surprising, as his political position is well-known. Likewise, the failure of the US to develop a coherent and effective policy with regard to the UN over the years, is nothing new. What never ceases to amaze me, however, is that an organization that gives such a poor return on investment in its political, security and development dimensions, continues to survive largely unquestioned by most of its members.

Tiny Malta, for example, spends something in the region of three million US Dollars per annum in membership fees and in order to maintain its three diplomatic missions to the UN and its agencies (New York, Geneva and Vienna). This does not include the resources spent on the UN and its agencies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Head Office in Valletta (and in two other missions - in Strasbourg and Rome - that combine UN-related work with other bilateral or multilateral duties) or the additional costs of the annual participation in the UN General Assembly (involving visits to New York by the Minister and usually also the Prime Minister, together with their retinues), as well as expenditure by other Ministries, including the costs of participation in UN-related meetings by non-MFA officials. The above figure also excludes the fact that the Government has an unknown sum of money tied up in the (undoubtedly very expensive) properties it owns in New York and which house the Permanent Representation and the Permanent Representative himself (the rent on which would probably amount to something in the region of half a million dollars). All these are publicly known facts, and most of them can be found on the Foreign Ministry's budgetary estimates for 2007.

The returns we are getting on this annual investment are not very clear to me. Most of those involved in this process usually tend to argue that no tangible 'short-term' gains can be expected, but that the world is being made better for our children anyway. I personally fail to see how this is the case. The UN's record on improving security is virtually non-existent. Few wars have been stopped or prevented by the UN itself (as opposed to the great powers striking deals in the context of the Security Council or outside it, which is something that they have been doing since long before the UN came into existence). I do not see very impressive results in the field of development either. A big part of the UN's development budget is consumed by the administration itself. I know of no country that has received a significant boost to its development thanks to the UN. I also know of few countries that have been saved from dictatorship or genocide by the organization. On the contrary, a significant number of bloody dictators and 'genocidaires' have, over the years, participated in, and been legitimized by, the UN. The UN's idea of defending human rights is the Human Rights Council (little better than its predecessor, the notorious Commission on Human Rights), which is dominated by those countries that have most to fear from criticism on that subject and which obviously block any initiatives in their own regard, thus rendering it completely pointless.

I could imagine a more rational UN that actually works. One that refuses to accept participation by non-elected governments. One that expels members when they do not respect the human rights of their citizens. One that does not give a microstate like Malta exactly the same voting power as India, with its 1 billion plus citizens. Until this happens, I do not see how the organization can be of much use to the world. I can think of much better uses for our money.

Benador Associates

 

As I know that most of those who visit this site, both those who know me personally and those whom I have never had the privilege to meet in the 'real world', are interested in the Middle East, I would like to share with them a useful website that I have started visiting regularly - that of Benador Associates, the PR company that represents Amir Taheri and a number of other 'neo-conservatives'. It has new articles almost on a daily basis, by Taheri or by other eminent writers like Charles Krauthammer. Needless to say, I don't always agree with every view they express, and they have had their fair share of controversy, but I almost never fail to find their material thought-provoking and interesting.