Patriotic twats

I dare use the title to this piece for one reason alone and it is certainly not out of any disrespect to people who have every right to hold different views on the issue of the immigration crisis in Europe. The more one reads of the terror that has hit Eu

The immediate reaction is to shout “enough” and join the anti-immigration bandwagon in defence of our freedom, our culture and our lifestyle. I will not hesitate to admit that I have, in recent days, been inclined to feel the same sentiments of anger and angst. Me going right-wing? Becoming a patriotic twat myself? Therefore, the reason for using the unsavoury title is, I hope, justified.

I have since brushed off all those lurking doubts, of course. Because when we talk about immigration we are actually talking about people’s lives, desperate people in search of better futures for themselves and their families, as has been amply shown with the establishment of huge immigrant communities all over Europe, very much in the same way that the immigrant communities in places like Australia, Canada and the United States developed over the decades at a time when Europeans, like today’s Africans, were fleeing from war, death, dictatorship, hunger and unemployment.

Yes, there will always be the riff-raff among them. The Mafia in the US gave the Italian community there quite a bad name and the stigma persists in the corridors of Hollywood creativity. Even the London Maltese, most of them hard-working men and women who integrated brilliantly with the English way of life, had for a long time been under a shadow, particularly when a sanctimonious Margaret Thatcher started her metaphorical demolition of Soho which is today a no less seedy Chinatown. Much earlier than that, the most feared “strange man” up north in Newcastle during WWII was a Maltese, the local pimp. The moral of the story: there will always be bad apples.

Perhaps it is here that most of Europe has got it wrong. Half measures only lead to security concerns, as events of the past 10 years have shown with immigrant criminals and terrorists having been identified, only to be then let free to roam the city streets, spreading their hatred and causing so much pain. The dragnet was left with far too many holes and too easy to penetrate, with the ensuing human tragedies that we have had to sadly assist to in places like Barcelona, London, Paris and Brussels.

However, you are not a patriot simply by demanding that bona fide immigrants and refugees are not rescued and taken safely to port. You are not a patriot if you think that your country, your culture and your lifestyle cannot withstand the influx of thousands of much-needed human resources for jobs most Europeans have lost the appetite for, in the fields, in the factories and on the roads. Pretty much the same way the Maltese in Australia initially moulded a future on the sugarcane plantations, only for their children and grandchildren to integrate and become respected doctors, lawyers, politicians and so on.

The Maltese government’s decision, happily with the support (and some hiccups) of the Nationalist Opposition, to refuse permission to “C-Star”, the ship of hate, to enter our harbours was not only wise, but also absolutely imperative. Italy, Greece, Tunisia and other European ports had done the same earlier. That it was done out of conviction, as the Prime Minister later explained, makes it all the more commendable.

It was rich that a band of selfanointed Maltese patriots, known as “Moviment Patrijotti Maltin”, try turning the “C-Star” episode into some sort of “cruel” act on the part of the Maltese authorities.

Didn’t your heart bleed when you read how our local patriots had to sail 15 miles out of Malta to supply that ship’s crew with water, bread, sugar, onions, potatoes, oil, eggs and, wait for it, cigarettes? That’s much more than the solitary bottle of water emaci-