What are you proposing exactly? Letting people drown rather than rescuing them?

I stand by what I said, if that makes me a person who,
in your opinion, suffers from paranoia and is smallminded
and ignorant, so be it.

I decided a while back that it is a waste of time arguing
with someone who is on a completely different wavelength.

I believe in Father Christmas, do you have a problem with that? My argument was not about religion, my argument was about people like you suffering from paranoia, whatever happens to or said about a coloured skin its racism
Does it really make a difference what colour a skin is or their religion, or the accent that you speak? Yes, it does. But only to those who are small minded and ignorant. What I said was that we need to address this problem of Illegal Immigrants and also said :

“You know what bothers me most on this subject, no one is doing anything, everybody is afraid of being accused racist.” And Mr Cikki pronto accused me of being racist.

Yes Cikki I REPEAT ,we need to send a clear message, we also need to increase prison term for Illegal immigrants and before we pull their boats to our shores we will make it crystal clear that they will end up in prison.

The message should be loud and clear, we cannot handle more immigrants for the simple reason that economically we cannot afford, also because our society is not accustomed to coloured skin we need to handle it much better than we are handling it now. Would it not be better to include the cultures of race into a school curriculum?

Yes, helping people who arrive here is an obligation, but we cannot solve the continents problem , population of 900 million. By continuing accepting whoever comes ashore, it will make the matter worse for us Maltese and also for them, cause yes there is a saturation point! It will be hard for them to start a community here in Malta and in who s backyard? We need to put our sleeve up and start working to educate people on such sensitive issue or else we are going to end up having a lot of Cikkis who cannot understand the difference between Racism and Illegal Immigrants.
Cause ,yes unfortunately we are not all “Colour blind”

If that’s the sort of thing that happens here, could you just imagine what happens in the places ‘these people’ escape from?

@Lino Cert – the words ‘ragel’ and ‘mara’ cease to exist in the Maltese language where immigrants are concerned. The same goes for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in the English language newspapers. ‘Man spat at police officer’ is the correct way of putting it, but of course, it has to be ‘Immigrant spat at police officer’ (could be a man, could be a woman…).

I have yet to see a similar way of putting a story in one of the London broadsheets – even the xenophobic The Sunday Telegraph. You have to read right into the story to find out that the man/woman is Nigerian/Somali etc, and sometimes you don’t find out at all, but just have to work it out from the name.

It is fatuous to suggest, on the one hand, that people should desist from criticising Libya for fear of ‘offending our neighbours’ while saying, on the other hand, that to do so endangers the lives of Maltese people who live there. If people’s lives are in danger in Libya, it is because of Libya’s regime and not because of what people here and elsewhere say about it.

You are generalising and talking about a whole continent.
I am talking about our immigrants. There will always be
brain drains – Maltese doctors to the U.K. British
doctors to the U.S. etc.
I assure you that the Eritreans I spoke to long to get
back to their country if and when it is free and they
can practice their profession.
But surely you are missing the point. These people after
a horrendous journey have landed on our shores. I repeat
they did not leave their country on a whim, so whether the
western powers should do more or we should be kinder to
the Libyans, the fact remains that as human beings we
should give them food, water and clothing. We are all so
good at sending blankets, tinned food, money, etc. to
disaster areas but then for too many of us its a case
of “not in my backyard”. That I cannot agree with.

Unneccesary name- calling is equally flippant and vapid and counter productive if one really wants to discuss in a serious and honest fashion ways and means of helping in a meaningful fashion the real needy.

Instead of having the media blatently accusing Libja and the Libjans of just how badly they treat refugees and how it does not honour human rights, it should , first of all, tell Europe to help Libja police its frontiers to be in a better position to control the millions currently swarming into it and causing problems within Libja itself. Continual bad mouthing of Libja and its leader by the local media and certain ngos not only is insulting to our neighbours but it can also endanger the well-being of Maltese people earning a decent living there.

@cIKKI,
Thank you for your kind reply. When I was referring to “evacuating a whole continent” I had in mind what I told by people I know who travel extensively to Africa on business and even on offical delegations. Goverment officials of certain African countries are starting to blame Europe now for enticing out of Africa their best brains and talent, and in so doing ,are making things worse , not better for Africa. Helping a man to support his family for the rest of his life by teaching him how to fish and presenting him with a good fishing rod is a lot more helpful and practical long term, then providing him with the occasional bag of fish fingers or worse still, poison the sea he fishes in .