Why hasn't any reporter challenged the Emigrants' Commission about this one?

Published: October 12, 2008 at 9:03pm

There are moments of great frustration in my Maltese-newspaper-reading life when I wish – albeit very briefly – that I worked as a news reporter. I read stories from which whole chunks of essential information have been left out. I read reports with absolutely no back-story to them: the merest facts are left suspended in mid-air, and you’re supposed to work out the rest for yourself, or spend idle moments speculating on what it might all be about.

There is a certain amount of questioning that I can do with a newspaper column and certainly with this blog, but a news report is a news report and I honestly can’t believe that so many assertions, statements and counter-statements are left to slip past unquestioned and unchallenged. The latest bit of annoyance was this morning, when I woke up to find that www.timesofmalta.com had published a Nationalist Party statement that Joseph Muscat and AST claimed to have met ‘former Serb president Ivan Llilich’ in Libya, but that no such person exists.

Did it have to be the Nationalist Party to work this one out and then to point it out? This is not a matter of partisan bickering, but about the credibility of the Labour Party’s press statements, and of those who represent it abroad without having the faintest clue as to who people are or are not. The Nationalist Party’s statement was published with no apparent attempt by reporters at getting hold of either Joseph Muscat or AST and asking them, hey, who exactly did you meet there? This man doesn’t exist.

They could even have tried to find out for themselves: within a couple of hours of my posting a bit about it on this blog (OMG – ergajna bil-misprints), somebody had come back with the name of the man they actually did meet, and some relevant links. It turns out he’s one of Milosevic’s people, not someone you should be proud of meeting at all, and the Labour Party was not only boasting about Muscat and AST being in the same important room as he was, but had botched his name with that of the socialist thinker Ivan Illich, too. If that isn’t a story, I don’t know what is.

One statement that screamed out to be questioned was that by the Emigrants’ Commission a few days ago, when it inexplicably pushed its head out of its box and spoke with the voice of Josie Muscat, telling us that the number of immigrant arrivals now exceeds the ‘birth rate’. It struck a pretty discordant note, causing me to wonder what the motive might possibly be. But what disturbed me even more than the strangeness of the Emigrants’ Commission sounding like a political far-right grouping was the fact that this statement contained no figures at all. It was the first thing I noticed.

I must have written a zillion press releases in my working life, and this omission hit me right between the eyes. The numbers should have been in the opening sentence or at most, the second one – but they weren’t there at all. It was a statement about numbers that failed to give numbers, and incredibly, it was taken at face value. The newspapers reported it on trust, without examining the facts, or asking to see those crucial numbers and then back-checking them with the National Office of Statistics, which has all the numbers you could possibly want. The newspapers didn’t even ask why there were no numbers. ‘Immigrant arrivals exceed the birth rate’….oh really? Show me your figures. A news story about immigrant arrivals exceeding births without any numbers is not a news story at all, but no better than the gossip at the shop-counter.

Annoyingly for me, this statement dropped right into the middle of one of my busiest magazine production weeks, so I found myself unable to do what I was longing to do: research the statistics and ring the Emigrants’ Commission to find out (1) why they had released that statement, and (2) how in heaven’s name they can hope to be taken seriously when they don’t seem to know the meaning of ‘birth rate’, which is not the same thing as ‘number of births.’ That the Emigrants’ Commission is unable to distinguish between birth rate and number of births is deeply shocking, betraying a quite unusual lack of competence. I have been seething about this, and about the failure of newspapers to pick up on it, for the last few days.

But as happens in times of factoid crisis, my colleague in cyber-space, Fausto Majjistral, has reliably come forward with the details. Fausto is the king of facts and statistics in the netherworld of politics, parliamentary life, elections and public policy, and his blog at Malta9Thermidor is much missed (he’s not doing it any more). So here he is, on the unbelievable – literally, as it turns out – statement by the Emigrants’ Commission and the failure of everyone else to do anything about it. He posted it as a comment, but I think it deserves to have a spotlight thrown on it.

I’m sure you’ve seen the recent press release by the Emigrants’ Commission, a press release worthy of Azzjoni Nazzjonali in its tone and content. One factoid it quotes caught my attention: immigrant arrivals exceed birth rate. Now birth rate is births per 1,000 of the population. So you can’t compare the two. What the Commission probably means is that immigrant arrivals exceed the number of births. But this is definitely wrong. The National Office of Statistics quotes more than 3,800 births for 2007 when, according to the Emigrants’ Commission itself, there are about 1,250 immigrant arrivals every year on average.

I’m not one who would want to minimise the problem, but this is scaremongering and highly misinformed coming from people who actually work in this sector. So much for having the correct facts before offering an opinion – but then Josie Muscat thinks that Dublin II is about Search and Rescue Zones, so you can see that the comparison I made earlier between his Azzjoni Nazzjonali and the Emigrants’ Commission is not spurious.

For those who, like the Emigrants’ Commission, are unable to work out simple subtractions, the number of births to Maltese every year actually exceeds the number of immigrant arrivals by 2,550. And here’s the thing: most of those immigrants leave for other shores, either legally or illegally, but the Maltese babies stay on, which means that in reality the gap is even wider. As for that birth rate business, I am utterly speechless – well, not really, but it’s just a figure of speech.




29 Comments Comment

  1. Marku says:

    Daphne, I hope that you and/or Fausto can post these remarks on the Times website where this story brought out the usual hysterical reactions by the assorted collection of xenophobes and racists who feel that they need to share their warped views with everyone else.

    [Daphne – He doesn’t want to because of the massive presence of pea-brained people, and I kind of feel the same way. Now that all the spoon-feeding has been done, perhaps some reporter will pick up the story, because it is a story.]

  2. A Camilleri says:

    You have to consider that the 1250 immigrant arrivals quoted is probably an average over a number of years. The number of arrivals is, as everyone knows, increasing every year. 2400 had arrived by end of September. http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080929/local/129-illegal-migrants-arrive/
    That’s still lower than the number of births, but its getting close. It could be that the Emigrant’s commission is using the birth rate [10.22 births / 1000] less death rate [8.1 deaths / 1000] and comparing with net migrantation rate which was 2.05 / 1000 in 2006 but which is increasing annually. I don’t know what the figure now is.

    [Daphne – The point is that the Emigrants’ Commission issued a statement without explaining how it reached its conclusion, exposing that conclusion to doubt. Why should you have to speculate about what the Commission might have used and might not have used? The Commission should have told you.]

  3. A Camilleri says:

    I can’t be sure that the net migration rate refers to illegal immigrants. But sticking to absolute values, the annual number of illegal immigrants is getting closer to the number of births and definitely exceeds births net of deaths.

  4. Daphne,

    One other thing to consider is that the sex ratio of babies born in Malta is, approximately, 1:1, as nature intended. Most of the immigrant arrivals in Malta are men.

    So a couple of decades down the line the 3,800+ babies born in 2008 are likely to reproduce much more that the immigrant who arrive in Malta in 2008 and stay on. This is why, I believe, Eurostat still predicted a decline in Malta’s population by mid-century immigrant arrivals notwithstanding — a matter completely lost on the commenters on the Times pages.

    Which leaves one rightly thinking that the comparison between births and arrivals is entirely arbitrary and about as enlightening as comparing immigrant arrivals with the number of people who voted AN in the last election. There’s more of the latter than the former, by the way.

  5. CJohn Zammit says:

    Sorry, but both you and Fausto are wrong …

    From the “birth rate” you can figure out the actual “number of births”; and vice versa.

    “Population” divided by 1000, and multiplied by “Birth Rate” = “Number of Births”.

    “Number of Births” divided by “Population” and multiplied by 1000 = “Birth Rate”.

    It is the same thing, expressed differently.

    But both of you are right in criticizing the Emigrants’ Commission … making a vague statement or quoting figures, does not solve the migrants’ problem; or Malta’s, for that matter.

    Malta — a sovereign state — has it in its power to grant citizenship to every migrant, at any time, for any reason, without having to answer to anyone.

    So, why not make them citizens? They will move on.

    Speaking of numbers, it is interesting that, according to the World Health Organization, within the EU, 350 deaths occur every day, due to car accidents. On average, of course.

    How many migrants arrive, daily, on Malta’s shores?

  6. Bernard says:

    What I imagine they actually meant is that the number of immigrants per annum is higher than the natural growth of the population (births-deaths). According to the NSO, natural growth was 425 in 2007 (3,536 – 3,111). Having said that, I get the impression that the Emigrants’ Commission was using the figures to highlight the fact that it needs greater resources, more than anything else.

    [Daphne – Why are we here speculating about what they might have meant? They issued a press statement. What they meant should have been clear, and when it wasn’t, some reporter should have picked up a telephone and asked them. If they need more resources, they should have gone about it another way, instead of lending grist to Josie Muscat’s mill.]

  7. A Camilleri says:

    I agree. Providing the figures would have made things clearer. The ‘fishing for more resources’ is a highly likely theory. This is a different tune that the Emigrants’ Commission is singing. I don’t agree that they should have gone about it another way. It’s problematic enough that anyone sounding concern on the illegal immigration issue is immediately branded a racist and xenophobic. We should be considering all aspects of the argument, without brushing those against under the carpet.

    [Daphne – Nobody is branding the Emigrants’ Commission as racist. The way to ask for more resources is to ask for them, and not to take the highly circuitous route of using erroneous figures and the the mistaken claim that arrivals exceed ‘the birth rate’.]

  8. H.P. Baxxter says:

    Aren’t we all splitting hairs? You got to the point in Malta, where saying that illegal immigration is a problem is considered racist and xenophobic. So you have to resort to weird and wonderful meandering elliptical arguments. Like this press release. Or Henry Frendo’s articles on Maltese national identity.

    Formulating an immigration policy is one thing. Fighting racism is another. The Josie Muscat types thrive in the typical Maltese all-in-one argument stew.

    ———–
    Just one comment on CJohn Zammit’s statement that Malta has the right to grant citizenship to anyone, as a sovereign state. Juridically-speaking, he’s probably right. However, as in all EU member states, there’s the political aspect to consider. I think we can all agree that current EU immigration policy, if it exists, is a complete shambles.

    [Daphne – No, Mr Zammit is not right. There are tough legal restrictions on granting Maltese citizenship to anyone who arrives here. To be blunt, you can’t do it. Common sense should tell Mr Zammit this: imagine a passports-for-sale scenario – you come to Malta, you get a Maltese passport, and then the whole of the EU is your oyster. Shouldn’t it be damned obvious that this is out of the question?]

  9. amrio says:

    I am definitely not a racist, nor have I ever commented on such racist-related entries. I agree with you that the Commision’s statement is jarring, and devoid of journalistic sense.
    Could it be that the Commision was saying that the number of Maltese net births (i.e. number of deaths minus the number of births in a year) is lower than than the number of immigrant arrivals in a year?
    I don’t know if this is correct, as no figures are stated.

  10. amrio says:

    sorry – my comment above is superfluous. Stupid Internet – the page I saw had only the 1st comment on it; it was only when I refreshed that I saw that other bloggers have commented on the same lines as my entry!

  11. Matt says:

    Daphne, please bring this up in your next Malta Independent column! Living abroad, the online newspapers (and the increasingly ridiculous comments section on the Times website) are my only means of staying updated on what’s going on in Malta. I am shocked by the anti-immigrant atmosphere developing, and when official organisations also start scare-mongering …

  12. @CJohn Zammit

    You do not have to “figure out anything” as NSO publishes statistics on the number of births. And although it may be a concept “expressed differently” it is not “the same thing”. It just goes to show that the Commission’s press release was written by a dilettante.

    @Bernard

    Explaining should be done by the Commission. But even if your explanation were to be the case then Malta’s case is hardly “unique in the world” as the Commission’s press release describes it. There are countries which are experiencing sub-replacement fertility.

    I think you’re spot on on the issue of resources. Right way for the Commission to make such a request…sigh.

  13. maryanne says:

    Numbers apart, I am interested as to why the Commission felt the need to issue such a statement. When I first heard the news, an alarm bell rang and I immediately felt that the press release was unusual and it sort of came out of the blue. But I guess one is too busy to keep on reasoning and I let it go until I read Daphne’s comments. now I am more interested to hear from the Commission itself what was the precise rason why they issued such a statement.

  14. quite irrelevant, really says:

    You’re absolutely right to question how, and why, the EC came up with these phantom statistics, but you seem to be doing the same cardinal mistake.

    “And here’s the thing: most of those immigrants leave for other shores, either legally or illegally”

    Can you please substantiate this claim with statistical figures?

    [Daphne – Actually, that was the only cast-iron figure given by the Emigrants’ Commission: 11,000 immigrants landed in the last seven years. The Emigrants’ Commission didn’t say – cunning, cunning – how many of them remain. But there certainly aren’t 11,000. I would say that it’s closer to the 3,000 mark. But guess what? I have no way of knowing if the Emigrants’ Commission, which deals with these statistics, isn’t saying.]

  15. Marku says:

    H.P. Baxxter: calling illegal immigration a problem is not in itself racist. It is however racist (as well as xenophobic) to argue, as some do, that we should not accept illegal immigrants because they will breed like rats or turn Malta into a country inhabited by blacks or infect the Maltese population with all kinds of diseases, and on and on.

    I also take issue with those who argue that temporarily feeding and housing these immigrants is unpatriotic because they are “sucking the country dry” and hence stretching our already limited resources to the limit. While not necessarily racist, such comments beg the question of why these “patriots” have never bothered to speak up against much more pressing problems that Malta has faced and is facing today. Why instead are these Maltese falling over themselves to obsessively pick on some of the most vulnerable people in our society today?

    [Daphne – The thing to do is to remind Maltese racists of that infamous day in the 1950s when Australia refused to allow a ship laden with Maltese would-be immigrants to put into port, on the grounds that the immigrant quota for coloured people had been exhausted already.]

  16. Antoine Vella says:

    hadn’t thought to check the numbers to compare the births with the immigrant arrivals but what struck me was something else. The Commission’s statement conveys a general air of gloominess without actually specifying why the influx of immigrants creates difficulties. I assume they mean logistic problems rather than racial ones but, since they don’t spell it out, they’ve allowed racists to put forward their own reasons (Malta is doomed; we’re going to be replaced by mixed races; etc) and claim that the Emigrants’ Commission is now agreeing with them.

    The Times journalist who interviewed Mons Calleja referred to this “fuel(ing of) racist sentiments” but the answer was evasive. Mons Calleja said that “it could be that there were some racists” in Malta, almost as if he’s not even quite sure whether there are any.

    I’ve long thought that the Maltese Church suffers from an inexistent PR (though that is the least of its worries) and this latest mess by the Emigrants Commission proves it.

  17. A Camilleri says:

    @Daphne: Are you serious believing that only 3000 remain, or are you pushing the figure down to elicit a reply from the EC? [sort of like the Inland revenue tactic with tax officio assessments]. 2500 arrived this year alone. Probably there’s more than 3000 in the detention centres let alone those who have been released from detention.

    [Daphne – Haven’t you noticed how the one piece of information missing in this sorry business is the numbers? Our MPs find the time to ask questions in parliament about manure and dog-droppings, but not about how many people are held in detention centres, how many live in open centres, how many have been granted refugee status…..the fact that 2,500 arrived this year does not mean they are all still here. I’ve just watched BondiPlus on the subject – again, no numbers, but maybe I was making a cup of tea when that bit came on.]

  18. Corinne Vella says:

    Antoine Vella: Mgr Calleja may have been trying to be diplomatic. Either that or he has been shielded from the nastiness that exploded on racist sites when he won an award for his work.

  19. Marku says:

    I have this nagging feeling that with regards to the immigration issue, the Maltese church is torn between two very different views. On the one hand, there is a genuine desire to help these people since that is that is morally right as well as the Christian thing to do. On the other hand, there must also be some concern that immigrants may threaten the so-called Christian basis of Maltese society. I wouldn’t be surprised if the statement by the EC reflects this schizophrenic attitude.

  20. Corinne Vella says:

    Numbers are not very convenient. They make us face facts. That’s why in public debate they are largely considered irrelevant, unless the discussion’s about bonuses or the opposition’s opinion on the government’s failure to deliver.

  21. Corinne Vella says:

    Marku: Why would Christians threaten the Christian basis of society? Many immigrants are Christian and the basis of Maltese society is anything but Christian.

  22. Marku says:

    Corinne: I agree with you completely but I’m not convinced that the Church necessarily would too. As I said, I suspect a certain internal tension over this issue. Let me be clear however that I have a great deal of admiration and appreciation for the work that members of the clergy are doing to help all immigrants without any distinction to ethnicity, race or religion.

  23. Antoine Vella says:

    Corinne Vella

    I know Mons Calleja to be a refined and intelligent person who is well aware of what goes on around him, so your explanation that he was being diplomatic is almost certainly the right one. On reflection, I think I was being unfair to him personally*.

    I’m afraid I’ve had too many online clashes with the likes of Malcolm Seychell and Norman Lowell (and physical ones with other breeds of thug, in years gone by) to give due credit to Mons Calleja’s poise and sang-froid when talking about disgusting things like racism; probably a question of temperament too.

    * Still doesn’t change my opinion about the bad timing and wording of the Emigrants’ Commission’s statement.

    [Daphne – On a similar note, Facebook seems to make otherwise sensible middle-aged people do the most ridiculous things. Check out Malcolm Seychell’s Facebook ‘friends’, complete with photographs. I would rather drink ink than allow a racist to list me as a ‘friend’ on Facebook, using my credibility to give him reflected credibility, but that is what those people are doing.]

  24. Antoine Vella says:

    Marku

    Your theory about the Church’s attitude is interesting but, apart from the fact that, as Corinne Vella states, many of the immigrants are Christian anyway, generations of Catholic missionaries have traveled the world to seek out the unbaptised and those who hadn’t received Jesus’s message.
    The ‘heathens’ are now being delivered on our doorstep, so to speak, so the Church should welcome the challenge of facing Muslim and animist people locally. In football terms we’re playing this match at ‘home’ and the Church should be grateful for it.

  25. Paul A Attard says:

    Migrant arrivals in the year ending September 30 totalled 2,559.

    The number of births in Malta in 2007 was 3,871.

    Mgr Philip Calleja has dedicated his whole life to the welfare of migrants, Maltese and foreigners, besides other charitable works. During the last few years the migrants coming from Central and North Africa have been taking his time and energy. Those interested in his work may wish to visit the Emigrants’ Commission Office near the Upper Barrakka and see for themselves.

  26. Joseph Cauchi says:

    I will not be surprised if the happiest man in Malta, when reading these comments, is none other than the Imam of Rahal il-Gdid!

    Could it be the reason why the Emigrants’ Commission reacted this way? I am only asking!

    [Daphne – Make yourself clear, please. This is not a mind-reading forum. I think it only appropriate to point out at this juncture that when racists set fire to my home at 3am while we were asleep – my home, the actual building, and not the front door – it was the Imam who called me with words of solidarity and not the Archbishop or any other Catholic leader, except for the Jesuits who had been through the same thing themselves, and both called and wrote.]

  27. Amanda Mallia says:

    Daphne – “I think it only appropriate to point out at this juncture that when racists set fire to my home at 3am while we were asleep – my home, the actual building, and not the front door …”

    And then the usual cry from the racists is that they are worried about the potential increase in crime due to the influx of immigrants. Better a hundred decent immigrants than 5 or 6 Maltese potential murderers.

  28. Religio et Patria says:

    Just a point of information on this thread:

    What the commission says about the number of immigrants and number of births is indeed factually correct for the simple reason that there are three factors which are not widely considered and which do have a not insubstantial bearing on the data:

    a. Illegal immigration does not include just the people who arrive so perilously by boat: There are the visa overstayers who are as numerous as immigrants coming from the sea. (In fact, the figures for repatriations given in parliament always include visa overstayers and not just those coming via boats – clearly indicating that the number of repatriation of boat people is factually less than the touted 50% rate).

    b. Statistics of births include also children born to migrants and this fact should be considered as well as the birth-rate amongst migrants is much higher than in the local population.

    c. Statistics for the actual number of people staying at the various privately-managed open centres are not exact and it is a known fact that stowaways and other migrants (who have somehow slipped the security net surrounding the islands) are accommodated there. This problem cannot really be assessed until a head count and proper documentation of sorts are introduced for migrants.

    Hope to have clarified a bit this issue.

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