Taking in the fallout

Henry Frendo claims the 500 migrants awarded temporary protection every year in Malta are problematic because they are cumulative numbers. Is this true in a country that welcomes over a million tourists and EU workers every year?

Historian Henry Frendo sighs in between one statement and another, at times exasperated at what he sees to be the “cumulative” increase in asylum seekers landing in Malta. This despite a stabilisation in the influx of undocumented migrants who landed on the islands after their treacherous Mediterranean crossing from the North African coast. In 2005, there were 1,822 landings. Of the 1,199 applying for asylum, 536 were awarded some form of protection. In 2006, some 1,100 landings were registered – of the pending applications from the previous years and new applications in 2006, 550 asylum seekers were given some form of protection.
A former UNHCR representative and head of mission for seven years that took him around the world, Frendo is however more than concerned at the arrivals of undocumented migrants to Malta, at times unexplainably. This year 28 refugees were recognised by the Refugee Commission, the lowest figure since the commission started to function in 2002. Another 522 cases were given temporary protection, while 637 were rejected, the highest figure ever.
And yet, Frendo – while eager to point out that Malta “has no problem” with refugees, referring to the numbers – he seems to be concerned about the award of temporary protection to migrants, the “special leave” to remain in Malta until they can return safely to their countries of origin or resettle elsewhere.
“The problem is all those awarded temporary humanitarian protection. The majority who apply for asylum are given temporary protection. Not because they are refugees, but because the UNHCR recommends that certain countries are not safe enough to send these people back to, and we submit to their recommendations. Now Malta is caught up in the imperialist and colonialist fallout of Europe – the countries in the Horn of Africa are all former Italian colonies. From the historical point of view, it is a double irony for us. We’re a colony ourselves, we never colonised anybody, and we are at the crossroads of this fallout. I don’t see refugees as a problem because the numbers aren’t great and they are quite manageable. Bona fide refugees can be an asset in any country where they integrate,” the historian says.
When I point out to him that only 22 applicants were awarded refugee status in the last year, he states the number is still a lot per capita “if you compare Malta to other countries… Do you know there are diverse cases where refugees resettled in Sweden have been sent back to Malta because of the Dublin Convention?” he says, referring to the EU instrument that places responsibility for asylum seekers at the first country of entry. “The Dublin Convention is outrageous for countries like Malta and Cyprus, for any small frontier state. It is making a mockery of the principle of solidarity that was one of the underpinning principles of the European Constitution.”
In fact, the Dublin Convention punishes Malta for the geographical caprice of being the EU’s southernmost state. Frendo laments the EU’s lack of perspective when it comes to Malta’s position and size.
“We have to take into consideration Malta’s geographical limitations. Basically they (the EU) don’t even realise how small we are, and what the pressures are for a place like Malta.”
Despite being a former UNHCR representative, Frendo is silently criticised by NGOs assisting refugees, especially due to his record of having upheld just two appeals from the hundreds presented before his board.
“Actually our second chamber upheld another two recently. It is a low rate but given the fact that we have such a high rate of acceptance in the first instance, it is not a low percentage. You have to compare like with like.”
I ask him whether he’s saying that this was just a question of balancing out the numbers? “Every case is decided on its merits, but look at Europe’s recognition rates and compare them. However, a week after having upheld the appeals and awarded the applicants refugee status, both of them had a job which they later resigned from and went on welfare…”
Frendo sighs when I signal that it isn’t a big deal for somebody to resign from their job. “You probably treat it just like any another statistic, right?” he tells me.
“The problem at the appeals stage for me has been the legal aid offered by the state. I’ve been complaining about it since I was made chairman of the appeals board, when it was set up. If someone asks me for legal aid, which they are lawfully entitled to, how can I judge their case before they are actually given legal aid? The state is obliged to give appellants legal aid but they don’t get it. We spent a period in which it was almost impossible. At first we had a legal pool from Joe Mifsud, the MFA president, who was in charge of the pool. Practically nothing ever used to happen. They saw it as all extra and they were busy enough with the Maltese.”
In fact, I point out to him, NGOs have remarked the standard of legal aid is deplorable. “You can use any adjective you like. Legal aid was not being offered. It is only now that it has been shaken up. But I was never satisfied with the quality of legal aid being offered, although often the frivolity of initialled fill-in-the-blanks printouts, dished out by way of appeals demanding legal aid, hardly permits much juridical expertise. Now we have some seven, eight lawyers… 11 apparently are on the books. We need a specialised pool of lawyers who are paid as much as there is need be to provide the legal aid necessitated.”
Despite Frendo’s claim that Malta “has a problem” with the number of asylum seekers who stay behind with temporary protection, I struggle to understand his reasoning. The number of foreigners working in Malta, themselves economic migrants, is by far a larger number. Over 600 foreigners were employed at the drydocks this year. Over 40,000 visas were issued to tourists and foreign workers. Why the government struggles with less than 1,500 undocumented migrants every year, still beggars belief.
Maybe it is because, since legislating in favour of refugees back in 2002 – a precondition for entry into the EU – Malta now seems to have begrudgingly taken up responsibility for the determination of refugees which have now suddenly turned up at its doorstep. Almost coincidentally, 2002 marked the first of the big arrivals of desperate asylum seekers – 1,686 landing in that year alone. In short, the government doesn’t want to be burdened with non-citizens laying a claim for their right to seek asylum.
“Before 2002, for the previous 20 years we had an arrangement with the UNHCR on refugees,” Frendo says, “the same way as had happened in the case of the Ugandan Asians and the Iraqi Christians, where they would find these people a permanent third country resettlement. In these 20 years we had just a little bit more then 3,000 asylum seekers, not the same asylum seekers as we have today, who enter the country illegally, landing at Xlendi and finding themselves in some bar over there. From these 3,000 asylum seekers, well over 2,000 were resettled over two decades. Some 700 asylum seekers from that number may have remained here. It means that on average there were some 30, 40 asylum seekers every year. In fact, Malta has no problem with Convention refugees here – they represent some 4 per cent of total decisions. And that rate, it’s not really a problem for Malta. It wasn’t a problem before, either.”
So why are those awarded temporary humanitarian protection today a problem?
“It is a problem in the sense that you have to know how to deal with it. If asylum seekers keep coming here indefinitely without any form of burden sharing with larger countries which might have had a past involvement in these countries and which are seen as some final destination by these people, and get sent back due to the Dublin Convention, surely this is a problem.”
But is it a problem because of the larger number of those awarded temporary protection? “Well it’s quite a big number. They are cumulative. If unchecked, it could affect social cohesion. To me, the claim that some repatriation scheme in Malta is working fine, has yet to be substantiated. Your guess is as good as mine as to what or where many of the asylum seekers who should be repatriated are right now. There are even criminal elements whose application was refused at all stages, who are still here. So far as I know the repatriation of 19 Nigerians last Thursday was the fist ever EU-funded joint flight.”
The big contradiction however is the fact that Malta still welcomes thousands of foreign, EU and non-EU workers, to the island, albeit legally. The problem with asylum seekers can only be the illegality of their entry into the country, maybe their claim on protection and residence, and the fear of a greater competition for resources. “I suppose so. If you don’t carry passports, you don’t have identification, we don’t know what they have done… but I don’t want to talk negatively here. To me it isn’t acceptable that somebody comes here to open up a brothel in Gzira, or that a criminal recidivist tries to claim asylum here in Malta, because the police are looking for him back home.”
I ask Frendo whether he means all asylum claims are what is described in government-speak as ‘unfounded’? “I don’t want to be negative but these are real cases. For example, I don’t accept that Turks are not sent back. This is about migration management; human rights are a sine qua non.”
When I opine whether Turkey can be considered a safe country to return to, Frendo remarks, “Isn’t it a safe country? Of course, every case has to be treated on its merits. But these cases do not have a chance in the first place. They get rejected at all stages. And I have spoken at the highest levels, even to police officials, some of whom may take this rather leisurely. This worries and bothers people.”
When I ask him how many ‘unfounded’ cases such as these exist however, Frendo says they are a minority. “But these immigrants are still here. Recently a rejected asylum seeker from Ivory Coast appealed his case, which was refused. I sent a four-page judgement to the Commissioner of Police and to the Minister. A month later, I read the Times’ law report to realise this man was a the leader of an extortion gang, who took Lm10,000 from a man with the threat that he would kill his children. Can you tell me why this man was still running around? Or why the prosecution repeatedly referred to him in court as a person who had been granted refugee status by Malta?”
Despite what comes across as paranoid bias, Frendo cannot seem to answer why the number of asylum seekers in Malta proves to be a concern. When one considers the recognition rate of refugees and those awarded temporary humanitarian protection, an average of 50 per cent over the past 4-5 years, doesn’t the fact that one in two cases is awarded some form of protection, testify to the so called veritable ‘genuineness’ of asylum seekers landing in Malta?
Frendo answers that the number of immigrants arriving illegally is “cumulative”.
I tell him that the numbers are not as large as any other group of foreigners actively competing for jobs, maybe even brought to the island by employers themselves. Isn’t it a problem for the Maltese that these people are African? I ask. Isn’t it just a case of outright racism that the Maltese are generally antagonist of those claiming asylum, when they are more accepting of other foreigners?
“Which foreigners are you talking about, because I think there is a problem as well that is being swept under the carpet. Maybe it’s because they are less evident and can integrate better, as can be seen from those arriving from Serbia. They come from a Christian-European background, and it helps facilitate integration. Naturally, if you are a worker whose job is taken by a Syrian, you’d look at it differently.”
Do you think there is great competition for resources by foreigners? “I think there is, such as in construction. There were some Arabs working on a nearby house, and the next day they were replaced by Maltese workers who were talking badly of them. These things are happening in society. You cannot compete with illegal workers, because they get paid less. And the unemployment rate in Malta is not low. You can see it even from the MaltaToday surveys – the majority of people supporting Norman Lowell are Malta Labour Party voters. What does that tell you? They are working class.”
Maybe it is because it’s a working class that has less job security in today’s free market than in Mintoff’s 80s… “Mintoff’s ‘corporativism’, of which I was one its biggest critics, was however a guarantee of work.”
So it’s a disenfranchised working class that finds such conspicuous non-citizens to be competitors for low-paid jobs. “I think so. It’s a problem of the post-communist world. Before, the communist state guaranteed you an apartment. The problem here is similar. I think that if you need workers, and we’re not talking of refugees here, these should be facilitated access to the country.”
And indeed, Maltese entrepreneurs are allowed to offer jobs to non-EU nationals, which means it facilitates economic migration if it is sanctioned by employers. But then why does the government put up a show of strength against would-be asylum seekers who may have no choice but to enter illegally into Malta to claim protection, by setting up Mediterranean joint-patrols? Isn’t this a contradiction in the way the Maltese state looks upon non-citizens, refugees or not?
“You mean Frontex? Do you think it makes a difference? I don’t think so. They think it’s a deterrent. But I don’t know what they achieved with it. Firstly they held them at the end of the summer season, when illegal crossings would have finished.”
And there’s also a question of international law, and what happens when they intercept a boat practising its right of innocent passage… “Exactly, what do you do? Shoot them, like Bossi once said?” he scoffs.
I tell Frendo that despite all claims that migration may represent a problem, the attitude towards African migrants by both government and Maltese is betrayed by the contradiction of a generous attitude by the Maltese towards catastrophes abroad, such as the Lm1 million record donation sent to the tsunami victims in Sir Lanka. Doesn’t he agree that the plight of African refugees and asylum seekers reflects the insignificance of the African continent after the Cold War?
“But the post-colonial problems of Africa are still there, such as corruption. Somalia and Eritrea have been governance disasters. One of the things that struck me in a Sunday Times survey was that the Maltese find themselves more uneasy with Arabs than with Africans. Maybe the whole discourse on race is somewhat mistaken. Actually there are more Africans than Arabs who are Christian. Today, globalisation is challenging the self-perception and self-identity of people. Every human being tries to find some form of meaning in their life and to have somewhere where to ‘drop anchor’ or ‘feel at home’.”
And maybe that’s what so many asylum seekers and refugees seem to want to do here. Maybe it’s also time to open up the home to others who are really in need.