What national crisis?
Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party has seen fit to describe as a national crisis the fact that a few hundred African immigrants are penned behind bars or living in open centres while doing the jobs that no Maltese wants to do.
Given that his first contribution to national politics as party leader was the wet declaration that 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote in local council elections (ah, but do they want to?), he must have realised that something a little more dramatic was called for. And nothing is more dramatic than the words ‘national crisis’. Picture the scene: he calls a meeting with Jason and the Two Ronnies and says that he needs to announce the advent of a national crisis. But what is he to say that the national crisis is? And Jason or one of the Ronnies comes up with Africans, because they don’t have a vote, nobody seems to like them, and it’s always a good idea to jump on a bandwagon when you see one rolling by. It’s a whole lot easier than talking about the number of protected birds being shot right now, in defiance of the clamp-down. You never know, some of those bird-shooters might be Labour voters, but none of the Africans are.
Here’s the thing, though: people are cooling off about the horrors of immigration. I don’t have any opinion-polls to hand, but I can get a pretty good sense of the shift from what’s happening on the internet. The comments below the news stories on immigration have vanished – pffffff! – in a puff of smoke. Where up to a few weeks ago there were reams of ire that amply demonstrated the failures of our educational system, now there are maybe one or two remarks by Imperium Europa’s erstwhile treasurer Charles Sammut, and by a couple of other stalwarts from the send-them-back-where-they-came-from brigade.
The hot topic now is abortion, and even that has shifted – from the rights and wrongs of using the Constitution to ban it, to the rights and wrongs of banning it at all.
There are at least two obvious reasons for this perceptible shift. The first is that as soon as Gift of Life marked the end of summer by cranking up its machine once more, it diverted everyone’s attention from the noisome question of whether we should shoot them at sea or go to war with Libya. Put simply, people now have something else to get them agitated. By taking a break for the summer, as they so amusingly put it, Gift of Life allowed the issue to percolate through people’s minds. Because they were given the space to think, people actually thought. Now I’ll bet that a significant number of even those 39,000 who are said to have signed Gift of Life’s petition are sorely regretting it.
To my great astonishment, I have noticed from the comments posted on the internet that large numbers of people now grasp the various permutations of the Gift of Life issue where before they simply thought like this: 1. abortion is bad; 2. we are all agreed that abortion is bad; 3. so if abortion is bad, using the Constitution to make sure it never happens is good; 4. therefore Gift of Life are right, and I must sign their petition.
From what is posted on the internet, it is easily discernible that Gift of Life’s main tranche of support is from people who cannot put a coherent argument together, but instead do the equivalent of shouting and screaming in cyberspace, which involves the use of lots of capital letters and exclamation marks, besides dragging in God, divorce, euthanasia and the imminent demise of the western world. Of course, this leaves out of the equation all those who don’t use the internet, but then you should consider that important shifts in public opinion occur first among just the kind of people who do use it.
The second reason is that the inevitable has happened. Familiarity has bred the opposite of contempt, or if not its opposite, then at least a decrease in the fear-of-the-unknown factor. Malta was unusual in that there were no black people at all here, and so those Maltese who never travel had never seen a black person in the flesh before the recent arrivals. That sentence is a little retrograde at first glance, but it is true. The fear was largely a fear of the unknown and of those who look dramatically different, which is why no number of Russians will ever provoke the same emotion. They may look different, but they’re still recognisably ‘like us’.
This fear of the unknown is deep-rooted and primitive, and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. I can still vividly remember my extreme distress, aged 4, when I saw a nun and a Chinese person for the first time, and to make matters worse they were rolled into one. It was my first day at school and my father tried his best to detach me from his ankles as I lay on the floor and howled in panic. No doubt, he thought my behaviour was caused by the bewildering experience of separation from my younger sibling for the first time ever, but it wasn’t.
It was caused by the sight of a human being with facial features that my child’s mind recognised as being distinctly alien, with no hair on view, who was dressed in a most unusual ensemble. And to make matters even scarier, that ensemble was jet black. Poor old Sister Lucy did her best to calm me down, but the more she fussed the more I screamed in terror, until she handed me over to another nun. This one had a moustache, but the most important thing was that she did not have a Chinese face. I remember my sons behaving like this when they were flat on their backs in their prams. Because the main faces in their tiny world were of a bevy of young and good-looking aunts and attractive grannies (even the great-grannies had no wrinkles), they would yell and holler like things possessed whenever a wizened old face hovered into view to coo. They would become overwrought.
The severely adverse reaction to the first-time-ever sight of black people in our midst is that of the child within the adult. The people who are upset would dearly love to lie on the floor and howl in terror until the fearfully alien creatures are removed from view, even if they don’t know it themselves. But adults can’t do this, so instead they resort to adult forms of making their fear known. They write letters to the newspapers. They post comments on the internet. They meet up in groups of like-minded individuals and rant. They derail dinner-party conversations by going on about their fears with an intensity that embarrasses everyone else present. They set fire to the homes of those they perceive to be aiding and abetting the threateningly different creatures who are coming in from the outside.
Now the fear has begun to ease off. The die-hards have remained entrenched in their opinion but everyone else is beginning to move on. If I can pinpoint the moment when things began to shift, it was the day those two babies were plucked from a sinking boat as their mother died beside it. There was a slew of comments beneath that news story, some of them suggesting that babies are being packed deliberately into unseaworthy vessels to tug at our heart-strings – you know, because African people have no feeling for their young and are quite content to let them die to serve as emotional decoys. Those remarks hit rock-bottom and after that, things began to change. Then Paul Vincenti came along with his planned assault on the Constitution, and the anti-immigrant comments dried up.
So I’m interested to see that the politicians are out of touch with the public mood. Those on the government side have been unnaturally silent in general. It is almost as though they have sent us to Coventry. Those on the Labour Party side, on the other hand, have stayed true to their tradition of not knowing what people are thinking or what they want to hear.
I don’t think anyone wanted to hear about giving the vote to 16-year-olds as a debut statement by the leader of the Labour Party. And coming off the Super One stage, after a painfully embarrassing ceremony in which Joseph Cuschieri handed over his seat (I’m surprised they didn’t use a symbolic chair), to announce that we have a national crisis on our hands, Muscat so badly misses the mark that it is almost funny.
National crises don’t have to be announced by the leader of a political party that is not in government. National crises make themselves felt. Nobody announces their presence. If you have to announce a national crisis, then quite clearly it is not a crisis at all. But there’s more to it than that: if you are an Opposition politician who wishes to create the sense of a national crisis –panic, hysteria, pressure on the government to ‘do something’ followed by resentment against the government for ‘doing nothing’ – you must take great care to announce this national crisis when the public mood is perfectly attuned to chime with it. There has never been any such public mood, just some very loud and vociferous people. But it is particularly hilarious that Muscat chose to make his announcement now, precisely at the point where public interest in this issue is meandering off and towards other things.
The astonishing thing about one Labour leader after another is that, outside the narrow confines of the party machine, they are incapable of sensing the public mood, or knowing what they should do about it. Alfred Sant got it right once, with Valued Added Tax and ‘barunijiet’ in 1996, but though his tactics were effective, his strategy was doomed to failure.
We have entered a new age in which it is the people who are setting the agenda for politicians, and not the other way round. The internet and generally improved methods of communication and of raising awareness have made this possible, where it wasn’t possible before. When communication is as efficient and immediate as it is on the internet, public opinion is formed much more quickly, and shifts and changes with alarming speed. But our politicians haven’t cottoned on to what’s happening yet.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
56 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Which Two Ronnies are we referring to? Kray and Biggs or Barker and Corbett? :)
I agree 100% with Daphne. I don’t think the Maltese are any more racist than any other European country (although that’s not what Daphne said!). There is the fear of the unknown, but I also think there is the fact that political correctness hasn’t reached Malta yet either. I think people in the UK, France, Germany etc etc are just as racist as the Maltese (I’m generalising, but you get my drift!), but they are too scared to say it, because it’s not PC!
Dear Ms Caruna Galizia,
After reading your article what national crisis, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Later I decided that this is no laughing matter. You mention “a few hundred African Immigrants” Do you know that the official figure is at over five thousand?
You continue to write that “people are cooling off to the horrors of immigration”. Allow me that disagree with this, because people are not posting comments on the internet it does not mean that they are cooling off. They are on the contrary engaging in more productive protests like signing of two petitions currently on the internet that oppose irregular immigration and that in a space of few days have gathered nearly one thousand signatures each.
Without being offensive your rationale about the reason people are worried about immigration is a proof that you have a fertile imagination. What people are worried about are serious problems like:
1) demographics of the country ( majority of these immigrants are men)
2) Strain on the health system of the country (did you ever go to a health clinic and get skipped in the queue by about ten immigrants?)
3) The creation of another category of parasites in the country adding to the never ending list of listed unemployed, tax evaders, dockyard workers etc. etc.
4) The increase in this trend this year a staggering 30% (if it were to stop at 5,000 maybe we could manage to integrate them but every body knows it is never going to stop.
5) the knowledge that in reality nobody knows who these people are, they could be hardened criminals instead of genuine refugees
6) Small incidents that go unreported in the press but that people are talking about like the case of a friend of mine in Floriana who was pestered endlessly by an immigrant who was constantly caressing her hair not letting her walk on and being insistent on getting her mobile. True not a really a grave offence but how many Maltese guys resort to these tactics?
7) The hypocrisy of a European union who tells us that we should help then but only agreed to sign for burden sharing after this was toned down to voluntary!
Ms Caruana Galizia everybody likes to talk with noble words about solidarity but the reality is that this is a problem of a continent that not even the whole of Europe can solve let alone tiny Malta.
Allow me to tell Joseph Muscat, as delicately as I can, what I think of his “national crisis” announcement:
“MUR SIB XI ZIEMEL” !!
A few hundred Daph ? More likely they are a couple of thousands. I certainly have no objection to immigrants (whether illegal or irregular) being in Malta if Malta were the size of Italy but we are already over populated as it is. I have a feeling that in time Malta will become an island haven for the ultra-rich who employ immigrants as maids and house-boys whilst the majority of the Maltese will see greener pastures abroad. Please convince me that I am wrong in my perception.
[Daphne – If the super-rich want an island haven, they’re not going to find it in Malta. And if the Maltese seek pastures abroad, then it’s because they’re greener, as you said. Don’t panic. This is called life. So far, you have lived in a bubble.]
Hi Daphne (and fans),
Interestingly enough, I came across this site today:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080924-does-ideology-trump-facts-studies-say-it-often-does.html
Of course JM declares things to be a national crisis; due to cognitive dissonance (as described) people who watch and who are Labour-leaning will believe it and a large percentage of them will continue to believe it even if the MLP issues a statement saying that there is no crisis.
:-)
I’m sure the boys in red are not clever enough to have orchestrated this intentionally, but the research shows what would happen if there was a retraction. So what have the MLP to lose?
What a sad world we live in.
A
Hello again,
Another article, this time about how people think that they’re right:
http://www.salon.com/env/mind_reader/2008/09/22/voter_choice/index.html?site_design=grapenuts
One quotation lifted from the text that sounds as if it could have been written about the Labour Party leadership:
“People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s.”
[Daphne – Cognitive dissonance – http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/how-and-why-we-lie-to-ourselves.php ]
@Simon Agius
1. Is that your problem? Competition for female resources?
2. No, I have never been to a health centre and been ‘skipped’ by 10 immigrants, not even by one. I have, on the other hand, been to A & E at St Luke’s with a genuine emergency and found the waiting-room full of Maltese people with back-pain or a sore thumb, screaming at the triage nurse because they had to wait for three hours, when they should have gone to a health centre or their GP.
3.The only parasites in this country are my fellow countrymen and women. The immigrants coming in from Africa are accustomed to a system where, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. So they work.
4. You need a calculator and a maths lesson.
5.We live already among hardened criminals, and people who use shotguns to blow each other’s brains out. Oh, and people who try to burn others alive in their beds because they don’t agree with them. It wasn’t an African who did that.
6. Surely you can’t be serious. Any woman who grew up in Malta has had to put up with far worse from Maltese men and knows how to handle it. Maltese men don’t stroke your hair. they grab your crotch.
7. Thank God Malta is in the European Union.]
Although portraying it as a national crises is alarmist, one cannot discount the problem of illegal immigration here in Malta. However, I would like to know what the governments’ long-term policy regarding illegal immigration is? Even though the Government may well be successful in getting the burden-sharing arrangements vis-a-vis the other EU countries, this is just a holding pattern.
(One cannot discount the risk that such a programme acts as a magnet. Something similar has already happened in Spain, after illegal immigrants were granted an amnesty there.)
The same can be said about setting up closed and open centres. These are just there as logistical arrangements, to clothe, feed and provide a roof ( however flimsy) for the illegal immigrants.
(AS an aside, in International Law, the only two statuses are either illegal or legal. There exists no such thing as an irregular immigrant.That is just PR.)
What are the long term policies? What will the status of the illegal immigrants be after they get integrated into Maltese society? Is there an integration programme? What kind of integration are we looking for? The multi-cultural (almost global) United Colours of Benetton society, something akin to London, will not happen here in Malta for the very simple reason that most of our illegal immigrants come from a restricted geographical area, mainly the Horn of Africa. Thus speaking of a multi-cultural society here in Malta is somewhat stretching the facts. One may almost call it a bi-cultural society, where the differences are literally black or white.
One is also assuming that all cultures can be integrated, living in peace together. This is a rather big assumption to make, reviewing the historical record.
Can cultural norms and values between two totally different cultures become intertwined enough for a stable society? One must remember that Maltese society has had very limited exposure to African (not Arab) culture. Will our society, becoming much more secular European, be able to integrate with an African culture that is still undeniably more tribal in outlook? I am not saying that ours is better and there’s is worse, but dismissing the differences between the two cultures and hoping for the best is just burying ones head in the sand. Should Maltese “Culture” be preferred? Is there room for cultural norms and values that we would totally abhor? I write this because I know of cases of Female Genital Mutilation that have happened here in Malta. Are there practices that can be “given up”?
I wrote this in the spirit of free debate, and am in no way implying that we should stop aiding people in desperate circumstances.
[Daphne – There is no female circumcision taking place in Malta. The practice is banned. The rumour began when a woman was hospitalised for several weeks at Mater Dei, and the nurses or orderlies spread the word that she had been circumcised. People thought that she had been circumcised there, and somebody I knew called me to report this ‘fact’. I was perplexed to realise that he wasn’t horrified at the thought of the operation having taken place here, but annoyed because ‘now we are going to start paying for their operations as well’. I explained that there is no way on earth that a female circumsion could occur at Mater Dei, because it is a banned practice. I called the Health Ministry for more information, and they enquired, calling me back to explain that the woman was recovering from horrific injuries sustained through circumcision in her own country.]
Daphne, I never said that the FGM operations ever took place at Mater Dei, and I do know that they are banned here. However just because something is banned doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. All manner of crimes are banned yet still happen. Hunting on protected birds is banned, yet illegal hunting occurs. Killing a person is banned, yet murders still occur.
Considering that in their own countries these “operations” are usually carried out in their own homes by a razor blade, they don’t need to go to any hospital to have them. Considering the ease (obviously not for person it is being done to) of the operation, I am sure that these kinds of cultural mores that we would find abhorrent, but in which in their culture are perfectly accepted, do happen in Malta.
I got to know from a colleague of mine who works in an ngo that works with illegal immigrants, by the way, not through the grapevine, and have never heard the other rumour that you checked out. I don’t want to cast shadows, but I do doubt whether the Ministry of Health really did a proper investigation. FGM is such a pervasive thing in East African culture, being done to more than 90% of the women, that I do doubt how they could ever be certain that none has ever happened here.
Look at this placard held up by a child in New York – or was it Washington? – during Dennis Catania’s attempt at raising US awareness about Malta’s immigration ‘crisis’ when the US doesn’t even know what Malta is. Brandon Pisani of hot news-sheet L-orizzont reports that the petition was signed by 948 people. In a comment posted on timesofmalta.com Dennis Catania claims that 2,000 people signed, which means “most” Maltese people agree with him.
http://www.l-orizzont.com/news.asp?newsitemid=47607
Dear Ms Caruana Galizia
I am writing again because I m not convinced still by your response
1) I am happy with my girlfriend! So competition for female resources as you put it does not really affect me, but what will happen when our children find an island that is not like the present situation? Roughly from the last census it resulted about 50% male and 50 % female. Although it does not really affect me, I m not happy to leave them in a situation where this natural percentage is altered.
2) The problem you mention is real but in no way erases the problem that I mentioned. Two problems do not make a solution.
3) True that some of our fellow country men are parasites in fact I even mentioned their categories. The only thing that these African Immigrants are accustomed to is a system where might is right and where corruption is widespread. I do not blame them for naturally being inclined towards these systems.
4) I like to work my maths without a calculator to keep my mind in shape. But probably I am wrong. 2,400 arrivals this year are more than a 30 per cent increase. You are right there.
5) That’s true but I don’t invite other hardened criminals to come here to continue adding to the list, like the immigrant from the open centre accused of raping three women or was it four ?
6) They may grab your crotch in certain places like Paceville but the girl in question is only fifteen and is not used to the Paceville system. Also there they will grab it then leave you alone unlike this case.
7) I certainly agree with that, the point is that while E.U. countries are saying we must keep them, feed them, cloth them and integrate them and they send emissaries that lambaste us because they are not kept well enough in detention centers these same immigrants vandalise regularly, they do not want to take some of our back! This I find very strange.
8) What about a solution? Are you of the opinion that this should be to keep here every immigrant that continues to arrive?
@Simon Agius: I am not trying to convince you. I’m trying to put you straight, to stop you embarrassing yourself in polite company.
1. If you’re worried about there being more men than women, then you’re worried about competition for scarce women.
2. What you see as a problem, others might see as an opportunity.
3. If you don’t want Africans to generalise about Europeans, then don’t generalise about Africans. There is more diversity in Africa than there is in Europe.
4. It’s not the arrivals that count so much as the departures. Have you worked those out yet?
5. That wasn’t rape: that was a prostitute and he didn’t pay her.
6. Girls of 15 go to Paceville. All girls of 15 who are of reasonable appearance have this kind of experience, and not in Paceville. When I was 14, I was chased by a Maltese man and had to ring a stranger’s doorbell to get away from him. It was on a quiet street in Sliema. And that’s not to mention the countless wankers – literally, not figuratively, flashers and sex-pests that I encountered throughout my life in Sliema and every time I went swimming at Ghajn Tuffieha. All were Maltese.
7. Your reference to ‘the EU’ makes no sense. Malta is part of the EU. The EU is not ‘them’ or ‘they’. It’s us and we. Every EU country has a great deal of illegal immigration to contend with. No other country expects Malta to take theirs, and Malta should not expect other countries to take ours. We joined the EU on the understanding that we would be playing with the big boys, and now we can’t expect to sit down and cry for getting thumped.
8. There is no solution. Grow up and stop expecting one. Life is full of problems to which there is no solution. This is one of them. I’m sure you’ll encounter others through your years on this earth.]
I saw the picture in orizzont
Uhmmm can someone answer a simple question?
How on earth can anything that happens here affect any Maltese living in the U.S.?
Who the hell is this Dennis Catania anyway?
Am I the only one who sees immigration of people who have already proved themselves to be determined, as a good tool to tackle the impending pension crises?
I think they should be trained at the e.t.c!
On the other hand they should not allow themselves to be exploited. I know one chap who does back breaking work for a whole day and charges 30 euros – PER DAY! That should not be allowed as it’s not fair to him or to Maltese workers. Probably the ones who “employ” him are then the ones who go screaming about invasions!
“The comments below the news stories on immigration have vanished – pffffff! – in a puff of smoke.”
Are you joking Daphne? Did you click on this link?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080926/local/malta-gets-its-way
[Daphne – Norman Lowell’s supporters out in force, my dear. It’s the ordinary people who interest me. The others are always going to think that way.]
Strangely enough most of the complaints about irregular immigrants regard black people. Nobody seems to mention the other side of the coin, the hundreds of women from eastern european countries, the Phillipines and Asian countries who come to Malta perhaps illegally and perhaps not. Might be because they are rendering services sexual and otherwise to the Maltese macho men!! I heard on the grapevine (some time ago) that you can buy a woman for Lm500.
Immigration is a problem there’s no denying it but those people who risked life and limb to try and find a better life surely deserve at least our compassion. Not all of them are saints but then neither are all Maltese!
[Daphne – It’s the fear of blackness. The others don’t bother us because we are used to seeing them, and because they can be invisible, working as servants in homes, for example, or in massage parlours with a neon sign saying ‘spa’ hanging outside.]
Darren
Your arguments are reasonable and but some of your facts are wrong. Daphne has already answered regarding the female ciscumcision but there is also a common misconception regarding the origins of the immigrants.
Last December, Prof Henry Frendo pubished a study on the origins of asylum-seekers in Malta
(http://www.libertysecurity.org/article1766.html). He lists at least 30 countries of which 21 are in sub-Saharan Africa. It is true that many originate from the Horn though, even here, it would be simplistic to talk of one culture – there is a big difference between Eritreans and Somalis, for example. There are, however, also many who come from the central and western regions; significant numbers come from the Ivory Coast, Niger and Nigeria, to mention just three. I was also surprised to learn that in 2006 we had more asylum-seekers from a country like Togo, which no one ever mentions, than from Somalia.
Part of the misinformation about immigrants is due to lack of PR on the part of the religious societies who operate in this sector. I’ve commented elsewhere on the role that the Church should play in combating xenophobia. Unfortunately the two main NGOs (JRS and Emigrants Commission) have no interest in communicating with the rest of Maltese society.
I agree that it is difficult to integrate people from such diverse cultures cultures but remember that most of those who make it to Malta are young, intelligent and adaptable. I do not believe that they will insist on maintaining their tribal customs and setting up a ‘Little Africa’ here. Those who decide to remain will do their best to blend in with the rest of the population and will have no intention of attracting attention.
The problem with some maltese is that because they were here first they think they own this rock. They’re like those germans who rush down to the pool first thing in the morning to claim their place with a towel on a deckchair . I dont know why the dilemma for Simon Agius . If he doesn’t like it on this rock he can always leave. He has the whole of the EU to play around in. And he would make space for one more immigrant who would be happy to take his place.
[Daphne – there were no ‘Maltese’, that’s the irony. There were only immigrants and travellers from other lands around the Mediterranean, hence our surnames. Maltese people even have African, Chinese and Japanese genes, as can be seen clearly from the facial features of some individuals.]
Simon Agius, I’ll be brief because Daphne has pretty much said it all: get real or move on to another forum – your comments on this blog are a waste of space.
Simon Agius: I don’t know where you got your ideas on crotch grabbing, where it happens and what happens next, but you clearly are not 1) female and 2) old enough to remember what was routine 20-30 years ago. What happened to your friend was unpleasant for her, but it was hardly unique or even innovative. Maltese men have had the edge on that sort of behaviour for decades, and no dark alleys are usually necessary. On the contrary, the weirdos and sex pests seem to thrive on the kind of audience they have in broad daylight and in very public places.
Antoine Vella: “Unfortunately the two main NGOs (JRS and Emigrants Commission) have no interest in communicating with the rest of Maltese society.”
I’d say the more likely explanation is that they’ve more than got their hands full at the moment and have few resources to spare on peripheral – though necessary – activity such as communication. That said, a public affairs programme is likely to cause more trouble than it’s worth to the organisations concerned, such as when the home of Katrine Camilleri was set ablaze as were several vehicles belonging to people associated with JRS.
Jo Saliba: That rumour of white slavery wasn’t just a rumour. Haven’t there been court cases in which people – both men and women – were prosecuting for buying and selling non-Maltese women?
I’ve always wondered why people here froth at the mouth when faced with the arrival of immigrants but don’t bat an eyelid at reports of white slavery.
OK Daph – I get your drift. Thank you for bursting my bubble. Whatever arguments one puts foward it appears you are still of the opinion that Malta should absorb any number of illegal immigrants. Try and understand the honest preoccupation of most Maltese who are certainly not racist but are genuinely concerned about the whole situation. What we are saying is that of course Malta must honour its obligations to save lives but that does not mean that if 1 million immigrants land here we have to keep them.
[Daphne – If one million immigrants land here, we won’t be able to keep them – having to keep them will then be besides the point. Let’s not veer into the ridiculous here. The Maltese population is the result of 1000 years of immigrant arrivals and integration. The clue is in that word – integration. Trouble only begins when there is no attempt at integrating people, no desire to integrate on their part, or a deliberate policy of encouraging immigrants to retain their own culture, as in the UK. The US system is the only truly successful one: everyone who arrives is expected to become American and to espouse American values, and does so. A few hours ago I was standing in a check-in queue at an Italian airport. There was a crowd of screaming, giggling Italian schoolgirls next to me. It was only after I had been looking at them for 10 minutes hoping they’d shut up on the plane (they didn’t) that I realised two of them were black. Otherwise, they spoke, talked, dressed and gesticulated exactly like all the other girls, so my eyes, picking up the irritating Italian girl gestures, didn’t notice the physical characteristics. That’s integration, and if it’s encouraged to happen, it will happen. Look at us: though we’re obviously the descendants of Arabs, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Chinese, Japanese, Berbers, Africans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Moors, Franks and God knows what else, we’re not exactly multicultural, are we? Rather the opposite, in fact.]
Another thing Daph – yes super rich have already discovered Malta – note the amount of old houses that are being bought and renovated. Maltese, unless they are the nouveau riche, cannot afford such prices.
[Daphne – So what? The fact that you’re Maltese does not entitle you to precedence in the queue for buying property. He who has the money buys, and the market sets the price. 99.99% of British people can’t afford to buy the London houses and Home Counties mansions being bought by Saudis and Indians, but they’re not saying that they have a right to pay a pittance for them because they’re British while the gadzillionaires are banned from buying. If you want to buy an old house, put your nose to the grindstone and work out how you’re going to get enough money to buy one, instead of trying to stop others from paying their market value so that you can get them at a discount and avoid the need of striving and using your initiative to earn more.]
If immigration is not an issue than why have all the EU countries (grudgingly or otherwise) accepted to insert the burden sharing mechanism in the Immigration Pact?? Of course we have a problem and it is called Africa!! For those who see up to their noses and think that this problem will vanish just by returning them to Libya (who would return them back to malta in a petty ping-pong game)the problem lies squarely here in Malta and once these people are left rotting somewhere away from our shores than the problem is solved. I believe that this problem, which lets face it daphne is one of the biggest social challenges the Mediterranean has had to face, would start being solved if this “burden sharing” works….in that way the numbers ( in Malta) would swell and every EU country would start feeling the “pinch”. I think that at this point it would be in everyone’s interest to find more equitable and sensible solutions to this challenge!! But then there is the fact that these people are segregated from the rest which does very little to help the delicate situation prevailing among lots of people who have grown to be fearful and suspicious of these people!!
[Daphne – Immigration is nothing new, and it doesn’t help to speak of it as though it were a recent phenomenon. If there were no immigration in the past, there would be no Maltese people today. The same goes for every other society on the Mediterranean littoral and beyond to the rest of the world. The problems are not the result of immigration per se, but the result of borders and immigration controls, which are relatively new-fangled things in the history of humanity. I’m not saying that there are no difficulties. I’m just saying that we should stop talking about this as though it’s something 21st century. I’m also completely mystified as to why so many individuals in Malta engage so personally in this issue, and feel so personally involved, for all the world as though it impinges directly on their life. It doesn’t. There are more important issues which affect you directly. Are you as worried about them as you are about immigration?]
….then there is the Political class……the PN right now is seen as too weak with the EU (it’s becoming a cliche now…you know one of those buzzwords used to shut an argument up). Obviously many think that the Immigration Pact is not satisfactory (as evidenced on the times.com) but then again what would be satisfactory for those who want to ignore humanitarian duties to be broken? What would be satisfactory for those who think that the sun rises in Burmarrad??? On the other hand I do think that the PN should try to come across as more agressive at times and should trumpet Simon Busuttil’s positive proposals a bit (sometimes I think the PN thinks that everyone is a blogger or a newspaper enthusiast) i do also think that this problem wasn’t tackled at the right time…so a big ‘tumakka” to the PN there please!!!!!!!
…….then there is the AN and Lowell—well lets face it to their credit AN were the only ones to talk about immigration before the last election, it was and still is the raison d’etre of their Party. lowell?? I’d rather shut my cakehole about the guy!!
..then Joseph Muscat, the new kid around the block who still seems to think that politics is the art of smiling, who thinks that platitudes will win him brownie points!! I mean for crying out loud this guy was in the EP for 4 whole years, he had the power to do something, he had the tools to start solving this “crisis”, he was part of the second biggest Political movement!! And what did he do??? Well you’ve guessed….. nothing!! And now a few of his loyal supporters on times.com expect us to look as if my dog is walking on its hind legs just becuase this guy woke up one morning and thought that “national Crisis” would sound really sexy at caqnu’s winevaults!!!
To Lino Cert and Marku – I find it strange that people who are advocating the integration of people from at least 30 different countries should tell someone who does not agree with them to leave. But do not worry, I said what I had to say and I am leaving “your” forum!
[Daphne – Simon, you are Maltese. You are the result of the integration of at least 30 different cultures, if not more.]
Dear Daphne – the argument of demographics raised by Simon Agius is much more serious than reducing it on a personal level. It is certainly not a case where we are worried that the illegal immigrants would take them all and we are left with only white men to chose from. Playing with the island’s demographics is distorting mother nature which allows a country to have 50% males and 50% females or very near to that equation. As you know well during the summer season we have been entertained with our daily ration of a boat with 28 illegal immigrants of which 26 would be males and two females. Sometimes the equation is 27:1 and at times we also hit the jackpot with a full load of male immigrants.
p.s. I am 44 years, happily married to my first wife of 22 years and with two children. Therefore I am not worried about not being left for choice. I am served.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
[Daphne – Thank you for using your real name and address. Comments are so much more credible and worthy of attention when they come with a true name. Demographics have an uncanny way of sorting themselves out, unless you are dealing with female infanticide in China. Do you know why the Maltese word for mother is the Arabic omm, while the Maltese word for father is a corruption of the French monsieur, rather than the more obvious Arabic abu? Try using your imagination: mummy was a local girl. Daddy was a foreigner who came and probably left again.]
@ Marku. I will be brief too. Everybody has a right to express his opinion which may differ from ours. Hence your invitation for Simon Agius to move to another forum is out of place.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
@ Lino Cert. That’s brilliant of you. Immigrants come here ILLEGALLY and if we don’t like it we leave this rock.
How come it did not cross my mind before. Thanks.
Tonio Farrugia
St.Paul’s Bay
@Jo Saliba. I differ. It is the other way round. Those who come here illegally to find a better life should be sent back. Only those who come here for fear of being killed in their country should deserve our compassion and given a refugee status.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
@ Lino Cert. Come to think of it I am going to take your advice. I will soon be leaving this rock and heading straight into the house of David Beckam. I will jump in his pool and all. I will tell him of your idea. If he doesn’t like it he may as well leave his rock.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
[Daphne – Got a lot of immigrants in your pool and garden, have you? Please don’t carry on with this silly argument of equating your private home with your country. Malta is not your private demesne.]
Dear Daphne – the point here was not an invitation to anyone to open his private property to illegal immigrants. Distorting the point pretty reminds me of others running away from the argument by branding as racist all those who speak against illegal immigration. The point here was that as much as we consider our private property as our home, this rock is also our home and we should not be asked to leave our home – Malta – to make way for those who come here illegally as much as I should not enter into Beckham’s home illegally and arrogantly ask him to leave. Come to think of it you did not feel you had to ask Lino Cert to stop his silly argument and ask us to leave our home.
[Daphne, No, Tonio, you’re distorting the argument by drawing a direct comparison between illegal entry into a state and illegal entry into a home. There is no basis for comparison between a person illegally entering Malta and a person illegally entering a British footballer’s home in Los Angeles. You distort the argument further by claiming that Maltese people are being forced to leave Malta to make way for illegals. Where and when have you seen this happening and on what basis do you predict this?]
Dear Dapphne, I was replying to Lino Cert who wrote, Quote:
I dont know why the dilemma for Simon Agius . If he doesn’t like it on this rock he can always leave.
Unquote.
That was the basis of the argument and of my reply and that is why I told you that you missed the point. Lino Cert was pathetic. He invited all those against illegal immigration to leave and illegal immigrants to stay. Never did I say that Maltese people are forced to leave – Lino Cert only made a suggestion, he did not force us to leave. And I was making a comparison to match his pathetic ideas. I go into Beckham’s home and if he complains I will ask him to leave.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay.
[Daphne – Tonio, please, you’re 44 years old and talking like a 14-year-old. I repeat: you can’t compare illegal entry into a state with illegal entry into a private dwelling. Nobody is forcing you to leave Malta. You have been told, legitimately, that if you don’t like it you can leave. Just as nobody is forcing you to leave, so nobody is forcing you to stay here. You don’t have a divine right to live in a country where there are no black people. That’s not how things work. It’s obviously not the numbers that you and others who argue like this are really worried about. Otherwise, you would be counting the number of EU citizens who have come to live and work here since 2004. There are thousands of them.]
@Tonio Farrugia
You are free to join him and leave as well.
Corinne – No, it’s not that the NGOs do not have time or are afraid of repercussions. Speaking from personal experience, if I had to use one adjective to define the NGOs working with immigrants, it would be ‘aloof’.
Until last March I was in the Balzan Local Council and whenever I used to speak to any representative of the NGOs I always found them very proper, very courteous but, somehow, detached to the point of haughtiness. In practice, the Council was continuously snubbed and the only thing that we were (once) asked for was money.
Throughout my three-year stint as Councillor I repeatedly contacted the priest and the lay person running the open centre, as well as other officials and volunteers. I came up with ideas of initiatives we could take jointly and practically begged them to involve the Council and invite the Mayor whenever they held an activity. I was invariably ignored. It was not a political issue because I learned that the parish priest was also largely left out of anything official. In Balzan, the Mayor and the parish priest are the two most popular and influential persons. They are known and loved by everyone as persons, not because of their position, and their mere presence at events connected with immigration would have a significant impact on local public opinion.
At the moment I must admit I’m rather sceptical of the goodwill of the main NGOs (JRS, Graffiti, Emigrants’ Commission) involved in working with the immigrants and it is my personal conviction that at least part of the ignorance which surrounds this topic is because they do not reach out to the locals. If they are unwilling to take risks they should allow others to do so. The Mayor and the other Council members – supported by the Minister for Social Policy – were, and probably still are, ready to commit themselves in public and show their solidarity but were always turned down. I would be very happy to be proved wrong and change my opinion but I don’t see it happening any time soon.
There is also an omission on the part of the bishops. Granted that it is their duty as Catholic prelates to publicly oppose divorce but this should not become such an obsession as to blind them to the serious pathologies, like racism, afflicting Maltese society.
[Daphne – I agree with Antoine. I have had the same experience myself. Though I have written several times to raise awareness about this subject, I have been viewed with suspicion and even antagonism by some of the individuals working for the organisations that Antoine mentions. It’s a ‘mind your own business and stay out of it to let us get on with it attitude’. Antoine’s use of the word ‘aloof’ best describes the attitude. They aren’t even willing to cooperate with volunteers.]
I am truly fed up of this illegal immigration issue. Is it an issue? I had a lot of sympathy for these people but it has been somewhat tempered with two direct experiences. Last week three immigrants stopped me as I was entering my place of work, asking for work. I didn’t have any work for them, as I have no use for manual labour. They then asked for money, as they were hungry. Seeing their glossy skins and adidas shoes and tops they were wearing, and their slight paunch, I didn’t believe them. It didn’t help that they were smoking either. As I started to walk to the office, one of them told me in fluent African accented Maltese that one day, he will be the “boss Man” here in Malta and I will have to sweep up his dog’s excrement. I went ballistic and told him where he could stuff his words. I then pointed to the cameras in my drive, telling them that all this was being recorded. They took off faster than a racing Ferrari.
The next occasion was at the Out patients at Mater Dei Hospital, yesterday. Waiting in the queue to enter the Gynae, i was preceded by an elderly Maltese lady clearly tottering on her feet with fatigue. I told he to go sit down as I would inform her when her turn came. Behind me there were two very pregnant black African ladies who were accompanied by a gaggle of children too numerous to count, and who, like children of their age are wont to do, were running all over the place. When the old lady preceding me’s turn came, I called her to the door, at which point one of the black ladies jumped me and went up to the security guard saying that the lady in front of me, who must have been 70, had left and had given her her place in the queue. Not being one to hold my tongue, I gave her and the female security guard, who was very young and very intimidated, one of the worst tongue lashings in Mater Dei History, and told her to keep her place. She and her companion, and a few of their elder children, then proceeded to offend me in accented Maltese, but their fluency of insults was pure Maltese.
These two occasions in the space of a week have tempered my vision of immigrants considerably. I have no problems with them coming over, at all. Indeed, I help them out through the various friends who ask me for things for them. But be they African, Russian, Libyan or whatever, I have a problem with people who impose, and who are here believing that we owe them a living. We don’t, not even those who are genuine refugees and not just economic migrants. They should be treated with all human dignity, but the moment that they start demanding that we go out of their way to respect their rights and beliefs at the expense of our own is the moment that I will be publicly asking for them to leave, politely.
I have heard instances that the immigrants, mainly male ones, have been organized into gangs by some kind of black mafia overseers. These farm out workers, negotiate prices, decide who works where and how, and get a cut from every transaction. There is no doubt that this is becoming the norm. The Government is failing to do anything about it. I dread to think how people are being coerced to work by these overseers.
We have got this all wrong. We need to help and protect these people, but I would like to see them organized by the state if they want to work, at a decent wage, and thus help them to move on in life, be it here or anywhere else. But if some of them persist in biting the hand that feeds them, and I see it happening more and more even in cases reported at the Law Courts, then its time for them to be shown the exit.
Malta, with all its imperfections, is our small home. We Maltese have always emigrated and integrated ourselves in mostly unobtrusive ways in many countries. I would expect any immigrants here to behave the same. What I would not like is to see some robed Muslim or Hindu cleric demanding that I respect his people’s beliefs above my own in my own country. The British have done this, sadly, and now places like East London are no go areas for native Brits. That is not a good situation. We have to make sure that we don’t let familiarity breed contempt. Its already happening.
[Daphne – Oh for God’s sake, Mario, honestly. And what were you doing in the queue to see the gynaecologist, anyway?]
Dear Daphne, I will not go personal as I respect you and your opinion as much as I respect mine. If my opinion differs from yours it doesn’tmean that I am 14 and you are 40. Now back to the argument. I already made the point that nobody is forcing me to leave Malta so you don’t need to tell me that – I was replying to Lino Cert who invited us to leave this rock if we don’t like it that way. Sorry I have to repeat my previous post but you chose not to understand and kept implying that nobody is forcing me to leave or stay here. Lino Cert made an invitation to those who are against illegal immigrants to leave this rock. So pathetic. I don’t have a divine right to live in a country where there are no black people – I know that and I agree. I did not mention black people, did I? But I have a divine right to express myself against illegal activity (did you ever ask why it is always 28 people in a boat?) and those taking advantage of this illegal activity. I am against illegal activities – be it of African immigrants or Ukranian white slavery as mentioned by another contributor in this post. In fact I agree with your last sentence of your post. It is not the number no – it is the illegality of immigrants, of the activity.
Tonio Farrugia
(44 years, may I?)
St. Paul’s Bay
[Daphne – The fact that you respect your opinion does not mean that this opinion is age-appropriate. You are exactly the same age I am, but your opinion and mode of argumentation are like those of a 14-year-old. This is not my opinion; this is a fact. 14-year-olds argue the way you do because they have not yet developed intellectually, socially, emotionally, in terms of experience or educationally. So that kind of argumentation is considered normal and acceptable at their age. At 44, it’s worrisome.]
Dear Daphne, Please quote the source of your studies regarding age and opinion.
What worries me – apart the Illegal activity – are people like Lino Cert who has insisted for us against illegal immigration to leave this country. So narrow minded. So pathetic. Grow up little Lino Cert.
Shall I put him with the 14 year olds too?
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
[Daphne – Are you serious? Do you mean you honestly believe studies are required to show people how 14-year-olds think and argue and how 44-year-olds think and argue?]
Mario Debono: That’s flushed you out, hasn’t it?
Oh then it is your opinion. A self-made-to-please opinion that since my arguments differ from yours, my ideas are similar to those of 14 year old kids and your ideas are of a mature 44 year old lady.
I have an opinion too about your ideas. Neither mine is based on studies it is just my opinion. May I put you on the same boat as mine – of the 14 year olds?
Only this boat is not illegal.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
[Daphne – You continue to prove my point that you think, write and argue like a 14-year-old. So I’ll treat you like one: enough, please.]
I have a fourteen year old and he is much more mature than this Tonio Farrugia. Tonio argues more like my ten year old, I think you flattered him Daphne
Quite a sandbox here at the moment it seems…
Mario:
Not to generalise, but the consistand disrespect by Maltese for people queuing makes your argument laughable. It’s one of the few issues I still have with the Maltese people (I’m not saying everyone, just a very noticable amount). It doesn’t matter where you end up in a queue, you really have to mark your place, or someone will just run right by you without a care in the world.
And your argument about their shiny nice adidas shoes could quite easily be turned around. You often hear how Malta can’t afford this extra burden, how Malta’s economy is struggling and then you take a sattelite view over some Maltese residential area to realise the number of pool. You read of studies showing that Maltese spend most on transportation (on an island 26km long) and they have the highest expenditure on clothes in Europe. I’m not saying the Maltese don’t deserve it. Malta is a small island, with few natural resources and the thriving economy the Maltese have created should be an inspiration for others, but that shouldn’t stop you from sharing it and realise that people are born under circumstances that no human should have to endure and all they want is a chance of a better life. Of course there are those who will abuse it. Of course there are those who take advantage, but let that be on their conscience.
[Daphne – What Mario doesn’t know is that most of the clothes and shoes are donated by people who don’t think as he does.]
For once the PN and MLP agree that there is a big problem with the african illegal immigration we are suffering at these times:a rare event!If you ask the maltese person in general 95 per cent will say he wants all these immigrants out of Malta:you can call us racist,racialist or whatever but the majority of the maltese have a right to say who enters this country:in the end,wait for when a big crime is committed by immigrants,and the maltese will react very strongly:do we need to arrive at this point?
[Daphne – Government and Opposition don’t agree that this is a ‘big problem’. They agree that the fears and anxieties of a certain element among the electorate must be pandered to. That’s different. The prime minister said what he did not because the country is under pressure from immigration, but because he feels himself to be under pressure from public opinion. The same goes for Joseph Muscat, whom I can’t yet call the leader of the Opposition. They are there to demonstrate leadership, and instead they are descending to the level of the panicking crowd. If you ask people whether they want to pay tax, 95% of them will say no. So what is your point about public opinion exactly? It is the law that decides whether people can stay, or not, whether they are rescued or not, and not public opinion.]
Dear Daphne, then we are on the same boat.
You reduced the argument of demographics to just competition for women – that was childish.
You chose to discard Mario Debono’s arguments by simply trying to ask him what he was doing in a gynae ward. Maybe accompanying his better half? Was that so difficult – if not childish?
You are (rightly so) against illegal white slavery but then not against illegal immigrants – that is disturbing.
You were sympathetic with what Lino Cert said about those Maltese against illegal immigration leaving our island when that argument at best is pathetic.
With Lino Cert’s argument why should we express our concerns – and that includes your weekly contributions dear Daphne. We could just leave this rock.
Dear Daphne I propose you to stay at the helm of this boat.
@Lino Cert – you have a 14 year old boy. How come? I thought you were fourteen yourself.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
[Daphne – I am not going to bother running through my arguments again. Your problem with black men obviously runs very deep. I’m not the one to deal with it.]
Dear Daphne,
So that is it. You may have missed my point. I am not against blacks. I am against illegal immigrants – be it those who come here on a boat or Ukranians entering the country as students and working illegally as prostitutes. However you chose to distort my arguments.
In fact I have already addressed this issue in another thread with Jo Saliba. I duly told Jo Saliba that those who come here illegally to find a better life should be sent back. Only those who come here for fear of being killed in their country should deserve our compassion and given a refugee status – those are black people too.
Tonio Farrugia
St. Paul’s Bay
@Daphne. I was waiting in the queue, and quite an orderly one it was untill the two imigarnt women created mayhem,, whilst my 38 1/2 week 42 year old pregnant wife was sitting down on a chair. Didnt your hubby accompany you to the gynae outpatients before ? You lost the plot there, and your comment, as that of your sister, was insulting to say the least. I was simply recounting two facts which happened. I am all for welcoming illegal immigrants as long as they behave themselves. If they dont, then they should go back. You dont bite the hand that feeds you, Daphne, whatever you do. You are taking advantage of those who respect your human dignity enough to try and help you.
Pat, Daphne, As for the Adidas getup, those three africans who asked me for work could have played in any Premier matches in the UK, they were so well attired. I dont think anyone donated Arsenal and Everton tops with matching Adidas shoes now, do they? They like as much as bought them with money earned in Malta. No poblem with that, but i think they have their sense of priorities mixed up.
I just wanted to make a point. Come here, behave yourselves after a fashion, try and integrate, and the Maltese will welcome you. Just dont take advantage of us. Believe me, we need immigrants here in Malta to do what we have become too lazy to do. Besides which, some of them are running away from horrendous situatons. But the song remains the same.
One last point. What I usally donate are not hand me downs, Daphne. They are medicines, fresh stock, and not expired goods. The JRS asks, I just give. Thats what a jesuit education gave me. And its not my “zejjed”, either. I never ask where they go, be they to Africans, or anyone else. If you had to ask me, I woudl do the same.
[Daphne – I never went to Gynae outpatients at the state hospital. I went to Tancred Busuttil and Eddie Agius at their clinics. But I had my babies in my early 20s so I wasn’t high risk, and the state hospital to which I had access was St Luke’s under Labour, not Mater Dei under this government. I spent most of last winter collecting and sorting clothes for a friend who volunteers at the detention camps and open centres. Some things went straight into the bin. Others were brand new, or very good quality even if used. Other people just gave money to be used to buy new clothes and bedding, or shoes. We can all be said to have our priorities mixed up. Some people spend excessive amounts on themselves instead of helping those with nothing. Some would say that’s a mixed-up set of priorities, other might beg to differ. My issue with you is that you beat the people of an entire continent about the head because of the perceived behaviour of three people you encountered. Imagine if we had to be judged by the behaviour of the Maltese in 1970s Soho. Haven’t you ever taken issue with a Maltese person in a departmental queue? Do you run down the whole of Malta because of that incident? Some of my fellow Maltese are the most vulgar, coarse, common and ignorant people I have ever encountered. I don’t use them as a yardstick for the entire country.]
Daphne. Point taken, I got married in my late 30’s . unfortunately my wife is high risk, thats why we were at Mater Dei Gynae, which is , despite the hundreds of people queing there, well run. It also happens to have a 4D scanner that we needed to use. But you miss my point. Its not the whole of Africa that is represented by these five, not thre migrants i encountered this week. Its the ones who are here. They are taking advantage of the system, and thats just not acceptable. Yes, i have an issue with that. I also have told off fellow maltese who behave just as badly. My isue is with individuals here as a collective, not with Africans. I have many african friends, in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, Mali and South Africa who are not like that at all. They have the same problem with their own people whom they try to help out. We have to differ between refugees and economic migrants…..and their mindsets as well. I’m just asking them to respect us, thats all
One more thing which bothers me, and believe me, this is happening, is that we are importing medicines for exotic diseases the likes of which we had never imported before because such diseases did not occur before the influx of immigrants. I’m not saying we shouldnt treat these people’s inherent tubercolosis, beri-beri and the like. Its a fact.
[Daphne – Every Maltese person is inoculated against TB, or should be. We got ours at school. They used to line us up, then a nurse would come along and give us a jab. It was a particularly nasty one, as I recall, with a ‘punch’ thingie rather than an injection. Beriberi is caused by vitamin B1 deficiency, not a bacteria or a virus. You can’t catch it, no matter how many immigrants you sit next to on a bus (and I don’t mean you as in you personally). You’d be better off worrying about the STDs brought in by legal immigrants, tourists and those with a temporary work permit. And again, I don’t mean you personally, but in general.]
Beri Beri needs follow up treatment Daphne. And lots of it
[Daphne – My point is that it isn’t infectious. Isn’t that what people are scared of? Or are we now going to begrudge the follow-up treatment of a few people with beriberi? I can’t see what you’re complaining about anyway, given that you’re the one selling the solution, apparently.]
Wrong again. I dont sell it. I dont even get it myself. You dont get my point do you? We are giving all people in Malta, be they emigrants or Maltese, top quality healthcare.I AM concerned that there are people out here who have no natural immunity to diseases that have not been seen in Malta since the war.We need to treat people who come here quickly and efficently, although sometimes we do not have the expertise. Otherwise, there is a very real possibility that some of these hitherto unknown diseases may spread. There are valid practical healthcare isues here. I have been laid up for most of summer, for example, with a foot infection that needed countless blood tests to ascertain that it was a form of MRSA of a kind not seen before in Malta. Believe me, it was painful. I had to stay away from people for a week. The only place where i could have got this is MDH, because i am frequently there because of work.
[Daphne – Fear of diseases: the age-old threat of the foreigner and the diseases he brings with him. Beriberi is not an infectious disease, no more than scurvy is. Nobody has any natural immunity to TB; you get it through inoculation. If you are Maltese and around my age, you have certainly been inoculated against it. TB was eradicated in Malta through inoculation, and not through some genetic mutation called ‘natural immunity’. What other diseases are there? HIV? Don’t have sex with immigrants, then. Apart from that, most of the diseases prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa are borne by parasites and transmitted through insect bites and not through person-to-person contact. Malaria is one. Another has been present here for centuries already and devastates a significant percentage of the dog population while affecting a few people: leishmaniasis. If you got MRSA, it wasn’t from an immigrant. MRSA started in British hospitals around the early 1990s, and spread from there to the rest of Europe. It has been present in Maltese hospitals for more than a decade. One of my grandmothers died after contracting it, and that was in 1999.]
Daphne, is TB the only thing around? Its not. Ask around. There are also several different forms of MRSA, and not the ones that evolved in UK hospitals only.
[Daphne – MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and one in three Europeans carries it on the surface of their skin, or in their noses, without developing an infection. If the bacteria get into the body through a break in the skin they can cause boils, abscesses, or impetigo. If they get into the bloodstream they can cause more serious infections. Note the key-word – Europeans: so are you going to lock us all up in solitary confinement, then?]
Two of them are meningococcal disease and Hepatitis. There are others.
[Daphne – Meningococcal disease? Are you seriously trying to convince me that meningitis and septicaemia were unknown in Malta before the arrival of sub-Saharan boat-people? Get a grip, Mario. As for hepatitis, you don’t get it by standing next to somebody in a queue. Hepatitis A is the result of poor personal hygiene or deficient sanitation. You get Hepatitis B in the same way you get HIV or other STDs, by injecting your heroin using a contaminated needle, or by being treated with contaminated blood products. You get hepatitis C in more or less the same way. So if you’re thinking in terms of the bubonic plague, forget it. If you want to avoid hepatitis, don’t avoid Africans, avoid the hepatitis way of life.]
Regarding what Mario Debono is saying, years ago I used to be a member of xarabank.com, indulging in an activity I still enjoy: baiting racists. The racist comments on the Times website are nothing in comparison to what used to go on in the old xarabank and avemelita sites and the still active vivamalta.
Anyway, on xarabank.com there was this lady doctor from Hamrun who used to insinuate that most of the African immigrants had exotic and very unpleasant diseases and constituted a serious health hazard to the local population. She used to say that she knew because she was one of the doctors who had to screen them.
[Daphne – I imagine that this is the same ‘lady doctor’ who, or so I am reliably informed by a doctor friend, spends her time in between venting against Africans inciting hatred of me on the viva malta forum, which is operated by the dreadful Norman Lowell and his miniature sidekick, my former classmate Arlette Baldacchino. It’s not only perfume that comes in little bottles. Another liquid that begins with P does, too. Here’s where the sentiment comes from. It’s the same school of thought which held that the Jews caused the medieval bubonic plague in between poisoning wells –
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200301/ai_n9222019/pg_1%5D
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3260391,00.html
http://www.queerty.com/magazine-claims-gay-men-spread-skin-disease-20080815/
http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/21
http://www.newsnet14.com/2007/12/deadly-africans-escape-to-spread-disease/
You are taking this argument to absurd limits. The fact is that if you have more people who are carriets of diseases, be they waht they are, you are inevitably increasing their incidence. Its not a reason to stop immigrants, or to help them. That was not my point. They can come here in their ten thousands for all I care. But they are NOT the saints you make them all out to be. There are a sizeable number who seem to think that we owe them a living, just because they are African. We do not. Whilst they are here, they need to contribute to the economy by working in fairly paid jobs, paying tax and NI, and generally behaving themselves, as do most Maltese. I’m not asking them to work for pittances, or ask them to give up their religious views, or to control what they eat. Nothing of the sort. And i have no truck with that madman Lowell and his sidekick. I am just a normal Maltese guy who does not want to see his country and countrymen abused.
[Daphne – I’m not saying they’re saints. I’m saying they’re people. They are no different to the rest of us, with all our peculiarities. It’s the distinction you make that bothers me: THEY have to work. No, everyone has to work. Why single out one group and not another? The biggest freeloaders in this country are not Africans. They’re Maltese. The ones who think they’re owed a living are not African (they don’t come from a welfare society, for heaven’s sake) but Maltese. The ones who are abusing your country are not African, but Maltese. Nobody is abusing your countrymen except for other Maltese.]
Dapne, anyone said they are not? Of course they are bloody people! Did I ever say they are not? I dont subscribe to your point of view. Does that mena that they dont work and if they do, they dont get fair wages and pay fair tax and NI? Of course, some Maltese scrounge the system. We have only ourselves to blame for that, for not reporting cases that we see and for constantly electing weak Governmnets that let the “civil” do whatever they want and get away with murder when it comes to social benefits. I have heard today that a proposal for a “guardia di Finanza” style unit was shot down by some very senior civil servants simply because it was to be autonomous from anyone except the audit office. I agree with you, the biggest freeloaders are Maltese. Did you ever report anyone, for example, your gardener or a bennej who moonlights as a Government employee? I have, and had my car ruined as a thank you. I am sure you dont freeload, as do many of us. We are the stupid ones. There are people, immigrants and Maltese who work the system and milk it for all its worth. And neither me, nor you, can do anything about it. We are not single mothers or fathers, or great oscar winners who convince people that we suffering some other kind of misfortune. We pay for the freeloaders, dont we?