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Should the government pursue its policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers?
The request increasingly being voiced by a decreasing minority to close the detention centres for illegal immigrants is likewise an emotive plea and is destined to falter under the scrutiny of rational argument.
 The Geneva Convention of 1951 clearly states that ‘Asylum is guaranteed by the right of a state to grant Asylum’ and not by the right of an individual to be granted asylum. The sovereignty of a state lies in its citizens and not in supranational institutions or non-governmental organisations. The democratic imperative of how a society should control its borders and the safety of it well being, resides with that society itself and no one else.
The Maltese public, through its state, endorses the use of detention centres not only to serve primarily as a deterrent but also to serve practical, secondary functions. If the Maltese public was consulted directly, there is no doubt that not only does it approve of detention centres but also disapprove of the fact the illegal immigrants are released into the host society irrelevant of their backgrounds or conditions once the obligatory detention period expires.
The illegal immigrants kept in detention centres (usually because of the deliberate destruction of their identity papers and false fabrications) are those whom the state denied asylum but did not yet manage to repatriate. It is not the detention policy that is failing but the lack of repatriation.
Detention centres are first and foremost a weapon of deterrence. Dismantling them will only provide further incentive for the millions of potential aliens to make the crossing. If we dismantle our detention centres, we might as well dismantle any form of border control and consequentially surrender any claim or control on our sovereignty.
Detention centres also serve two very practical functions of containment and quarantine.
Felons and terrorists have often posed as asylum seekers. Malta is no exception. Indeed there are instances of known terrorists which have been identified and apprehended among the illegal immigrants that made it to our shores. These are worrying questions which the media should be asking but unsurprisingly refrains from doing so.
In a formal PQ, the Prime minister stated that five percent of the soldiers in contact with illegal immigrants were found to be “strongly positive” with TB microbes – a disease that was eradicated over half a century ago. We at ANR are aware that likewise a significant number of health employees have also been found to be “strongly positive”; indeed I personally know hospital employees who have spent three whole months ingesting powerful cocktails of antibiotics as a direct consequence! And what is the true picture about the prevalence of HIV, hepatitis and venereal diseases amongst the illegal immigrants?
Suppressing facts is irresponsible enough, to even contemplate the dismantlement of detention centres and consequentially jeopardising the common good in favour of fictitious individual rights is downright criminal.
Martin Degiorgio is chief spokesman for the Alleanza Nazzjonali Repubblikana
My basic objection to the present detention policy is twofold: the system is ultimately and unnecessarily cruel, and it does not work.
The fact is that after a maximum of 18 months in detention, all the migrants are released into the community. Here lies the basic contradiction, for it is very difficult to understand how both aspects of our policy can be justified: either immigrants are a security threat even after 18 months, or they are not, so that they can be freed much before.
 Those whose first application for asylum has been rejected but whose appeal has not yet been heard are released after 12 months, because that is what the EU directive says. If your appeal is rejected before 12 months you have to spend up to 18 months in detention. In practice this means that if you are lucky enough you are freed six months before the one who was unlucky to have had his case decided fast.
There are still persons, endowed with the same human rights like you and me, who arrived in Malta last August, and who, until last Sunday, March 19, had not yet been interviewed. Many of their companions, from Eritrea, who had to wait 5 or 6 months in detention to be interviewed, were freed shortly after their interview. How can anyone ever justify depriving a person of his or her freedom for such a length of time because the state is so inefficient?
Detainees find it very hard to understand why they are detained for 18 months, and only then do first steps about deportation start to be taken, even if their appeal has been rejected months before. Why all this unnecessary suffering?
The list can go on and on, and now that we have more than four years of experience, we should be honest enough and have a good look at what was actually an emergency measure in a novel situation. I am sure that with our own experience and with that of other European countries, we can come up with alternatives that are more humane, less expensive and more efficient than the present system.
I have never met an immigrant who said he wanted to come to Malta. Many, if not most, were brought here, so they cannot even be accused of trying to enter Malta illegally. Yet, while we accept that people accused with the most heinous of crimes, like multiple homicides, corruption of people in high places, drug trafficking or child abuse, should be given some form of limited freedom, we are unreasonably harsh with those whose only failing was to arrive at our shores without a document.
I’m sure Malta can come up with something much better.
Fr Paul Pace is director of the Jesuit Refugee Service
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