The harsh reality behind Muscat's ghoxrin-punt plan
The last time one of these boats with 257 immigrants arrived, Joseph Muscat waded into parliament and announced a crisis, calling for an urgent debate. Tonight, he can sleep easy, because instead of getting here most of them drowned. They were drowning even as he was announcing his dream of a new awakening at the foot of Mintoff’s ‘freedom’ monument.
www.timesofmalta.com Monday, 30 March – 21:44CET
Europe-bound migrants’ boat sinks off Libya
A fishing boat packed with 257 migrants heading for Europe has sunk off the Libyan coast and at least 10 Egyptians are among the dead, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said this evening. MENA quoted an Egyptian Foreign Ministry official as saying rescue workers had rescued at least six Egyptians. It gave no word on the fate of migrants of other nationalities on board. Two boats of approximately the same size arrived in Malta earlier this year, with some of their passengers being Egyptian.
22 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Are you referring to Joseph Muscat or Norman Lowell? I think it was Mr Lowell who suggested we should shoot the immigrants 20 miles out at sea.
[Daphne – And Joseph Muscat who suggested we should put a quota on entrants (and leave the rest to their fate).]
Daphne, with all due respect, what was it that JPO said about migrants? Something about towing them back to the Libyan side of the Med and leaving them there…
I don’t mean to shift the spotlight away from Muscat… But let’s not forget the other colourful characters standing on the stage… Muscatism is spreading across party lines…
Daphne, what’s so strange? Go and see how tough immigration policies in the US, Canada and Australia are.
When that number was exceeded, the government should show its teeth, not with migrants, but by suspending administrative procedures of Dublin II, such as the fingerprinting of all migrants. This was what other countries did. This meant that when a migrant moved on and was re-arrested, a country could not send him back to the EU country he came from.
source: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090316/local/muscat-presents-action-plan-on-immigration
[Daphne – Your point being?]
The opposition’s 20 point plan never suggested that we should leave immigrants to their fate, as your article might have implied. “The government should show its teeth … not with migrants”.
[Daphne – Oh for crying out loud. Please don’t go into denial. Muscat specifically said a quota. He was asked by several persons, including the minister of home affairs, what he would do when the quota was reached – put up a ‘Sorry, full up’ sign? A quota means that’s it – no more. There’s no quota if you keep taking them in. That’s the status quo.]
… he even said that we should consider ignoring international obligations – erm, explain that one
The next prime minister, whoever he is, must learn to steer clear of contentious issues that further only the national interest. Europe is in a critical position and its future leaders must understand where common interests lie. Some things are absolutely no-go. Racism is one.
When I heard of this quota business for the first time I was wondering why positive discrimination in favour of the feminine gender (something popular with left-leaning institutions) wasn’t factored in – you know, a boat with 10 women and 10 men arrives, only 10 places left, so they go to the ladies. Then I thought someone must have figured out that if we keep the women they’re more likely to stay on and multiply.
Apparently two boats sank –
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090331/local/two-migrant-boats-sink-off-libya-hundreds-missing
However you look at it, it’s a human tragedy and whoever is making money by organising these boats must be heartless.
So another boat load of human beings has drowned taking many people with it, their hope for a better future truncated in the Mediterranean. Whenever I come across these migrants I wonder what they went through to get (unwillingly) to our shores. I also think, who knows what they are capable of, given the chance (remember Elegy in a Country Chuchyard?). [Daphne – http://www.bartleby.com/101/453.html%5D
But for some Catholic Maltese this means that they will strenghten their willpower not to eat fish anymore! I was astounded when I heard this comment uttered in all seriousness by a very well educated lady. [Daphne – She can’t have been that well educated. The stuff we got at one or other of the convent schools was not education, but rigorous training in conformity and just enough information to get by.]
Ellul, so that I may understand –
if you set yourself a quota of collecting and accepting only 10 strawberries to avoid perceived problems of indigestion, and you are supplied with 20, what do you do with the extra 10 if no one wants them?
Daphne, Thanks for the link to Elegy in a Country Churchyard.It was good to read it all again. The only exception in this instance is that these people don’t even have a grave to mark their resting place. May they rest in peace and may their tragedy soften the hearts of those who may be “satisfied” that these people never made it to our shores. It’s also time for those in power – G20 for example- to tackle the great African problem. Easier said than done, but we have to start somewhere.
Had “Blabbermouth” at least researched the subject, he might have refrained from making a jackass of himself…but then again, he might have already been salivating for his hamburger.
Sure it was not made of elephant meat?
Key facts: Africa to Europe migration
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6228236.stm
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. JOHN DONNE
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of their own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
Moving words but I’m quite sure they’ll wash over the collective head of Muscat & co. They’re far more concerned about VAT on car registration fees and how they’re going to worm their way out of that gaffe. Immigrants don’t matter. They don’t vote. Dead immigrants matter even less. There’s an ‘eternal flame of freedom’ on that infamous monument, isn’t there? No wonder it snuffs itself out.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090331/world-news/two-migrant-boats-sink-off-libya-hundreds-missing
It seems grotesquely defamatory to infer from Muscat’s stance on immigration that he will be pleased to hear that anybody has died. [Daphne – If you don’t rescue people, they die. Whether he is pleased that they die or not pleased that they die is irrelevant. He is pleased when they don’t arrive, even if this absence of arrival is the result of death. Had those two boat-loads arrived, he would have announced once more in parliament that there is a crisis. The problem is not in their arriving, but in their leaving, because the interim ‘solution’ between one point and another is death. This is the fact that the two Muscats and their supporters, besides many supporters of the Nationalist Party, cannot face: that if you can’t stop them leaving, you have to make damn sure they arrive. Muscat’s 20-point plan focuses on stopping them arriving and not on stopping them leaving, so to say he is concerned about death is fatuous. How, otherwise, does one stop them arriving? I think it has rather less to do with cruelty and inhumanity than with poor thinking skills, absence of imagination and very average intelligence.]
I am not a proponent of trying to make political capital out of this issue – and Muscat should be ashamed of himself for seeking to do so – but his position is fairly unambiguous and has not at any stage endorsed taking potshots at approaching immigrants, or any febrile nonsense of the sort. [Daphne – No. He has proposed not rescuing them when we have reached our quota.]
It would appear his practical solution relates to capping the number of potential asylum applicants permissible (a measure not currently envisaged by EU accords). In effect, this would appear to mean packing a given number of asylum-seekers off to fellow EU members without even processing them, although it is far from clear how that would actually be done. [Daphne – It is not clear because it is not possible. If it were possible, the United Kingdom, which has Europe’s biggest problem with illegal immigration because that’s where all the immigrants want to go, would have done it already. They would have shoved some immigrants onto us, when we hardly had any and Britain was inundated.]
Muscat’s proposals also seems to suggest that Malta should work to avoid having expelled migrants being returned to its shores from other EU nations, which is not an outcome that I am aware has come about very often.
To draw on Joseph Micallef’s analogy, however, it is not illegitimate to ask why fellow EU members would refuse to take excess “strawberries”, when they are evidently in a better position to do so than Malta. For the sake of a civil political debate, it might also be useful to agree on perceived quotas that would help avoid “problems of indigestion”. [Daphne – It is quite obvious why not: any such new agreement would apply right across the board and not be a special exception for Malta. The United Kingdom would be entitled to redistribute its own immigrants, as would Germany if things take a turn for the worse and economic pressures increase. We will then spend the next few decades playing Musical Immigrants. The trouble with us is that we have retained our ‘special case’ mentality even when we should have long since joined the grown-ups.]
Only some sort of domestic consensus on these matters would put the EU as an institution before the inescapable task of drafting a more constructive approach to the problem. As it is, Muscat is doubtlessly being cynical and disingenuous, although he is hardly alone in this, but to impute him with an almost joyfully sadistic disregard for human life is a little much. [Daphne – That is not what I did. My position is this: if you don’t rescue people on the grounds that you have exceeded your quota, refusing to send out patrol boats, then they drown. I can say things clearly because I am not a politician and don’t have votes to worry about.]
Peter, whichever way you look at the quota suggestion, all it implies is that Muscat does not want the surplus to land in Malta. I would be very surprised if Muscat says he would be happy if they drowned – it would be highly discordant with his current emotional joy-ride.
However, independently of what he wants to happen to these fellow humans, there is one undeniable fact ensuing from the proposal. This person is as alien to politics as I am to strawberry cultivation. Rest assured that with his current ill-conceived proposals he is planting his own demise – most of these policies will haunt him forever as will his no-referendum-vote and hamburger-glorifying grin.
Essentially, as you have expressed voluminously, your argument is that Malta will be unable – and does not deserve – to negotiate special conditions with other EU members in helping to alleviate the influx of migrants. I think this is a matter of conjecture at this stage; although the signs do not look promising, it would be hasty to rule out any kind of accommodation for a country that it obviously less equipped than many to deal with even the present inflow of migrants, namely Malta.
As to the country that has the biggest problem with illegal immigration, there is more room for debate on this than you are allowing for. This area of discussion is invariably a slippery slope, but I don’t think it would beyond the realms of reasonableness to suggest that Britain and Germany, not to speak of Italy, are clearly more able to absorb incoming migrants, if no better reason than the fact they are simply bigger places with more dynamic labour markets (including Italy). I would even venture to dismiss the likelihood of any large European country sending immigrants back to Malta in any putative musical-chairs scenario, so I am not sure that objection holds water.
[Daphne – Peter, the United Kingdom is not ‘able’ to absorb immigrants, but willing to do so. There’s a marked difference between the two. Britain has a centuries-old tradition of absorbing fleeing populations and using their strengths. That’s partly how it went on to become ‘Great’ Britain. The country has an entire structure in place for absorption. Malta does not. It is not a matter of size, but of culture and systems. The Czech Republic, for example, is vastly more able to absorb African immigrants in terms of space and numbers than Malta is, but in reality, it is just as unwilling and its people just as hostile. African immigrants look as unusual in that country as they do in Malta. They don’t blend in because they are not allowed to do so.]
Anyway, and I don’t quite understand what I am doing here trying to defend Muscat’s argument, none of Muscat’s famous 20 points explicitly states that Maltese authorities should be stopping illegal immigrants in such a way that is conducive to their deaths. In that respect it is relevant that you are trying to imply Muscat will “sleep easy” because some Egyptians have drowned, or any such similar charge. This kind of rhetoric is misleading and poisons discussions about an extremely important subject.
[Daphne – Not at all, Peter. It is crucial to remind people, our politicians among them, that some political decisions can and will result in death. It is easy to slip into a state of denial so as to avoid confronting the brutal truth, by speaking about numbers rather than lives. In that respect, the prime minister is far more honest with himself than the leader of the opposition is: he said in response to Muscat’s ‘this is a crisis’ speech that no amount of political pressure will reduce him to the level where he speaks of and treats other people like waste matter, and he reminded Muscat that their duty – together – is to fight against the rise of any such sentiment in the country and to lead by example.]
And this is important, since some of your readers are labouring under the misapprehension that Muscat is indeed advocating that Malta should take the law into its own hands and make sure that boatloads of migrants are made to go on their way should they get within a hundred yards of the island’s territorial waters.
[Daphne – It is not a misapprehension at all, but a correct reading of what he said, which is why he was left speechless when the Home Affairs minister asked him how he would administer the quota system and whether he would perhaps put up a sign saying ‘full up’ and leave all-comers to drown.]
I, too, am not a politician, but it would be naïve to ignore the glaring fact that broad consensus is essential to any prospective immigration policy. The status quo is leading to a deepening and corrosive breed of racism in Malta, which cannot be wished away by the occasional administration of liberal-minded advice from the isolated bien pensant community.
[Daphne – It is not the influx of immigrants which caused racism. The racism was always there, but latent because it had no target. We grew up on an island with absolutely no black people. Fifty per cent of Maltese people have never left the confines of the island and so these are the first black people they have seen, apart from television and films.]
Muscat’s 20-point plan is indeed excessively buffoonish and woefully rhetorical, but it would be better to attack for what it is than for what it isn’t.
[Daphne – Yes, exactly.]
One final point I will make is that I would expect to hear it from Muscat’s own (smug) mouth whether he is specifically advocating not sending out patrol boats or sending away incoming illegal immigrants as part of his bid to disregard “international obligations” and stay within his self-imposed quota. It is my understanding that in referring to these, he is actually addressing the questions of Malta’s obligations as an adherent to the relevant EU legislation. Of course, once he actually comes out and says the words “let the buggers drown,” I will happily rescind all that is stated above.
[Daphne – He has been asked the question in public several times by, among others, the Home Affairs minister and the prime minister. He has remained silent.]
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that he hadn’t thought through the quota system. That’s in the grand tradition of Labour Party Big Ideas – shoot first and hang the consequences. The point is to say you’re going to do something and then, if elected, to do it just to make a point. Never mind the outcome. That’s just a detail and nothing to do with any of us.
The bloody fool.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090401/local/libya-finds-100-bodies-of-drowned-migrants