Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/758493
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2016 24 Opinion Who's really in a 'state of illegality' here? L isten to some people argue, and you'd think the definition of 'illegality' depended on their own personal assumptions, rather than any actual infringement of any actual law. So if they are personally convinced that something (or, bizarrely, someone) is 'illegal'... hey presto! The thing or person in question suddenly becomes 'illegal'... not because a crime has been committed, but merely because the vast majority here doesn't know what the word really means. The most conspicuous example concerns 'illegal immigration'... and therefore, by extension, 'illegal immigrants'. The term broadly refers to anyone who enters a country without proper authorisation or documentation, usually through non-mainstream channels, for any reason whatsoever. Yet in Malta over the past 15-odd years, it has increasingly come to refer almost exclusively to sub-Saharan Africans trying to cross the Mediterranean by boat... often ending up here purely by accident. Oddly enough, this category accounts for only a fraction of all the people who enter Malta irregularly each year. Most non-EU foreigners who come to Malta under dubious circumstances will not necessarily be African; nor will they have come here by boat or through any other form of human smuggling networks. They could just as easily f ly here (with a perfectly valid airline ticket) from a former Soviet Republic such as Georgia or Ukraine; or from Turkey, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan all the way to the Far East. Yet ask anyone for a description of an 'illegal immigrant', and it will invariably be: 'black man on a boat'. It is a recent misconception, however. In the 1990s, Malta was inundated by migrants from former Yugoslavian nations such as Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Some applied for and received humanitarian protection. Others were rejected, and some were deported. But many stayed; and though it took them 20 years or more, some ended up as fully-f ledged Maltese citizens (without, I might add, buying their passports for €1 million). I don't recall any of them ever being described as 'illegal immigrants', or spending any time in detention. Nor do I hear anyone complaining about their presence in Malta all these years later. Why not, I wonder? Why do the people who aggressively insist on the instant deportation of all black Africans, not insist on the same yardstick being applied to ALL people who came here by unorthodox, non-legal means... no matter how long ago? To me the answer is fairly obvious. Malta is a much better place as a result of this infusion of Balkan immigrants 30 years ago. These people introduced a sorely-needed cultural variant to the local mix: some have made extraordinary contributions to Malta's cultural milieu, that in other countries might earn them the equivalent of an OBE. Our entire arts scene (and I reckon sports, too) would be infinitely poorer had they never come here at all; or had we deported them all as unceremoniously as we now threaten to deport Africans. Even in other less deserving cases, we stop short of demanding instant Raphael Vassallo The naked truth of the matter is that we only apply the 'illegal immigrant' label to foreigners who are visibly different from us at a glance