Monday, December 10, 2018

TMID Editorial: What next? Give the vote to migrants?

According to a report last week, Minister Helena Dalli tentatively raised the possibility, one day, of allowing migrants to vote in local council elections.

The very idea, the report added, was immediately rebuffed by the rest of the Cabinet.

It is easy to see why this happened, as this would be the immediate reaction of so many Maltese.

Yet it is also easy to see why one day this may indeed happen.

The migrants – we are speaking here of people from outside the EU, whether they have come in by boat or by plane – are people who are living here, mostly working, paying taxes, paying for accommodation and for things they buy at the shops, having their children educated in our schools, being cared for by our hospitals and health services.

What is to stop these people from exercising their political rights as well?

If we look outside our limited horizons, we can see that this happens in so many other countries.

What they do have, and what we do not have, is a roadmap to what is inevitable in the medium to long term.

Here in Malta the legal way towards citizenship is perhaps not so well marked and delineated as it is in other countries. On the one hand, it has been said that our rate of rejection of asylum seekers is too lenient. Then, other countries have a stricter policy than we do when it comes to giving residence rights, work permits and the like.

Some, or many countries insist as a requisite a rudimental knowledge of the language of the host country. Here, we seem to think a basic knowledge of English is enough.

But that can also mean that immigrants can get to live here without a basic knowledge of our culture, our traditions, our democracy. How can such people be allowed to vote and by their vote determine the outcome of our country?

In other countries, moreover, there is a process and a sifting so that only those people who can be reasonably assured of respecting the laws and traditions are allowed to stay. Here, not even those who are found guilty of crimes by the Court are sent away. We already have a class of migrants who constitute the criminal fringe and who sometimes put our criminals to shame.

It would be a pity if the good part of the migrants are held back because of the criminal activities of the few. The good migrants endured terrible hardship so that they escape from war and poverty and give their families a better future. It would be a pity if such people are held back.

The history of other nations who have integrated wave after wave of migrants shows that such people can bring positive values to the country in which they are welcomed.

This editorial was published in The Malta Independent printed edition.



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