Daphne, what’s so strange? Go and see how tough immigration policies in the US, Canada and Australia are.

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…

The bloody fool.

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.

… he even said that we should consider ignoring international obligations – erm, explain that one

[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.]

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.]

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.

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.]