It’s an outdated mindset. Citizens of other EU member states have the same rights and obligations in this country as you do, for a start.

Your point is that people of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds live there, speaking different languages – and not that they are “foreigners” (barranin). So say so.

You don’t need to call them anything. You don’t need to distinguish between ‘foreigners’ and ‘Maltese’.

Malta is in the European Union, anyway.

It’s not done anywhere anymore, except in remote Polish villages where Maltese tourists are mistaken for Syrian refugees.

Do you think anybody in London or Paris or Milan or Berlin or Stockholm splits people up into foreigners and locals? In London, even the ‘foreigners’ are local. People are just people.

So what would you call them? Non-locals? Ex-pats? Non-Maltese workers? I’m not referring to the tourists but to the foreigners who live and work in Malta without yet having a Maltese citizenship.

It’s like ‘xjuħ’ vs ‘anzjani’ argument…. just call a stick a stick.

It’s so backward, the kind of thing you’d expect in some backwoods village.

Oh, wait a minute…