Fostering the under-proletariat

The news yesterday that the Planning Authority officials found 120 migrants living in abominable conditions in a farm where cattle used to be kept, shows us once again the conditions which some or most of the migrants are living in.

The further news also yesterday that a further 114 persons on a leaking boat were rescued and brought to Malta continues to show that the never ending stream of migrants crossing the sea at their risk is not drying up.

Presumably, the 114 will now join the rest of the migrants in Malta, scrounging jobs, working hard for a pittance, with very little chance of improving their lot in life which is why they left their home in the first place.

These two unconnected stories show that a new class, an under-proletariat, is growing in Malta. Without being in any way racist, Malta’s society must analyse this phenomenon and see what it can do about it. Just doing nothing is no real choice.

Apparently, the persons found in the farm in Qormi are legally in Malta, having come here from Italy. That back door remains completely

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open and soon the trickle will become a flood as the Salvini government in Italy continues to mop up migrants and push them out. We cannot remain declaiming that there is nothing we can do while their numbers continue to increase.

Nor is it in any way doing charity and humanitarian assistance. Like we saw at Qormi, they are left to live like animals, probably get no financial help, increase the people at the Marsa roundabout asking for jobs, without learning any skill, without prospects for the future. We are not helping these people.

Of course, there is a wider aspect to all this. People in Malta maybe are now aware of the latest developments around us. The ship Aquarius, with 141 migrants upon it, has been roaming around the Mediterranean with no permission to unload its human cargo, neither by Malta, nor by Italy, and now not even by Spain. Open Arms, the Spanish NGO, which operates the ship, has asked the Spanish authorities for permission to land, but Madrid, which made such a big fuss some weeks ago taking in migrants which had been rejected by Malta and Italy, this time remained silent. Public opinion in Spain, which had welcomed the first shiploads, has now turned and there is a risk of an increase in xenophobic political parties, like elsewhere in Europe. Open Arms has now appealed to Brussels for help. The EU gave Spain €55 million in July but Spain has said it needs double this sum. The migrants who landed, have been running around, aiming to get to France, which is next to impossible, striking fear in the countryside.

Once again, what good is this doing to the migrants?

The situation is dramatic and these people deserve better but not with the do-gooders tactics that have been used so far. These tactics will become anger and disgust with Europe which opened its arms but then left the migrants flounder and sink. There is not such a big difference between drowning in the sea and living in filth and poverty in a farmhouse which used to house cattle.