But if they can find €750,000 to pay the government, they’ll be allowed to stay

Published: December 2, 2016 at 10:27pm

A Labour government without a social conscience might be a contradiction in terms anywhere else in the world, but not in Malta. Now our fake-liberal government is gearing up to do a Donald Trump in the run-up to the general election, with a festive season of migrant deportations starting next autumn.

The very same government which has issued thousands of visas and residence permits to Libyans and Algerians with the right connections, who pay the right people, and which is selling Maltese citizenship to anyone who can come up with the cash, is going to deport an Eritrean couple who have been in Malta for 11 years, and their two small children who were born on the island.

All that stands between their deportation to hell and their continued normal life in Malta is €750,000. Because they don’t have €750,000 to pay Joseph Muscat and his cronies for Maltese citizenship – €650,000 for him, €50,000 for her and €25,000 for each of the children – they are going to be sent away and their children’s future is ruined.

This is the worst, the very worst, kind of brutal sink-or-swim market economics applied to matters which should be governed by other principles. It is the equivalent of turning the desperately ill and the dying away from hospitals where they cannot pay the bill, when there are no free hospitals for them to go to.

The argument used to back migrant deportations is that ‘there is no room in Malta’. But if Malta has no room for a few poor Africans, then it has no room for several thousand people from Libya, several hundred people from Russia, and all the Americans, Chinese and sundry others who have bought passports.

A rich person takes up the same amount of physical space as a poor person. Correct that: the rich person takes up far more space because he buys or rents a bigger flat and drives up real estate inflation, making it difficult for Maltese people, who have less money, to buy a home.

When you’re kicking out an impoverished, struggling young Eritrean couple with two small children but then opening the arms of welcome to the legions of the world’s corrupt and rich, then you know that you have no moral compass whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the redoubtable Pauline Miceli, Labour government appointee to the post of Commissioner for Children, stands up to be counted and contests the government’s decision.

The Police Minister denies that an Eritrean family with two children is in detention awaiting deportation, but that is not what the original news story said. It said that they will be deported when their temporary protection expires in August.

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