Many questions but no answers

 

Retired multilateral diplomat Michael Zammit Cutajar wrote a very stimulating article in yesterday's Times in reaction to a series of four articles by Martin Scicluna on illegal immigration and the Government's policy towards it. The article is stimulating because it consists mostly of (somewhat loaded) questions, the most important of which can be summarized as follows:

- What are the actual numbers of illegal immigrants in Malta?

- Has the present policy worked and has there, in fact, been a decline in public order as a result of the presence of these illegal immigrants?

- Are conditions in the centres adequate?

- 'What is the point of playing "tough" to the political gallery if an irregular immigrant who has served the full term and cannot be repatriated is allowed to stay anyway?'

I find these questions in their basic form to be very interesting and important. The last one, in particular, has always intrigued me. However, it does not take a genius, nor even a deconstructionist, to realize that the way Mr. Zammit Cutajar posts most of his 'questions' is a thinly veiled 'diplomatic' attack on the present policy. The 'intended' answers to his own questions are clear enough. Mr. Zammit Cutajar basically seems to feel that the threat is mostly imaginary and that we may dispense with most precautions. Maybe instead of being concerned about the future political implications of this phenomenon we should be grateful for its rather meagre and poorly distributed short-term economic benefits, as he seems to hint.

It is odd that Mr. Zammit Cutajar finds Mr. Scicluna's reference to 'threats to security, internal stability and public order' to be 'speculative and unconvincing' merely because they refer to possibilities which have not yet taken place. I assume that Mr. Zammit Cutajar is aware of the issues and problems arising in other European countries, where the phenomenon is in a more advanced stage. Does he believe that the situation in Malta is substantially different? If so, how?

I fear that very well-paid people who are trained to say 'the right thing' and achieve consensus are not always helpful where there are real problems to be understood and solved, rather than just resolutions to be passed.