Oh, so Muscat has never been to a detention centre?

Simon Busuttil on Joseph Muscat and his ghoxrin-punt ekxinplen on immigration, in The Times yesterday:

“Given that Joseph Muscat spent 50 months in the European Parliament without ever taking one single initiative on immigration, I was eagerly awaiting his 20-point plan to save our country from illegal immigration.”

“He announced that he agreed with the government’s policy on detention. But then why had he abstained on a vote in the European Parliament to condemn detention as “unacceptable”?”

“Dr Muscat proposed that a parliamentary committee should visit and report on the state in detention centres. Fine, but it bears recalling that when – three years ago – the European Parliament sent a parliamentary delegation to visit detention centres in Malta, Dr Muscat was the only one of five Maltese MEPs to fail to accompany the delegation. He was conspicuous by his absence and has since never visited a detention centre.”

“Dr Muscat spoke on the need to change the EU’s Dublin regulation, insisting that we should veto EU decisions sporadically until this is done. But he appeared completely oblivious of the fact that this law has been under review since December and – as irony would have it – the European Parliament was discussing it just as Dr Muscat rose to make his immigration speech last Monday.”

“Dr Muscat spoke out against illegal employment but he seemed unaware that only last month the European Parliament adopted a new law to impose very tough financial, administrative and even criminal sanctions on employers caught employing immigrants illegally.”

“Whereas Dr Muscat’s speech was laced with repeated references to legality, he then unashamedly suggested that we should ignore our legal obligations under EU rules (on Eurodac) and international law and use our veto sporadically.”