One should consider it a major cause for concern when three out every four Algerians receiving Schengen visas issued by Malta, ostensibly for study purposes, end up not returning home. It is also concerning when such people never had any intention of studying in Malta in the first place and used those study visas purely to gain access not to Malta but to the wider Schengen zone.
This is a cause for Maltese concern and of European concern.
But despite the fact that this newspaper has been highlighting the issue for years now, after it was first raised by the Opposition back in 2015, we had been met with nothing but excuses.
The Prime Minister put the sudden surge of Algerians wanting to visit Malta all of a sudden down to the opening of an air route and a consulate, when in actual fact this was probably more of a chicken and egg situation.
The government handed this newspaper correspondence from the European Commission confirming that Brussels 'considers that on the basis of information available [presumably that supplied by the Maltese government] there are no grounds for pursuing this matter further'.
In the meantime, Malta National Audit Office was called in to investigate the sudden upsurge in the issuance of visas for Algerians - 7,000 in the 18 months following the opening of the Maltese Consulate in Algiers in March 2014 - at the behest of both the government and opposition.
In the interim, the European Council gave an indication that not all was quite well on the visas for Algerians front, despite the comments from the government and the European Commission. In fact, it was the European Council that had warned Malta in the interim to ensure that when its consulate grants visas to Algerians that those receiving visas, which are, in effect, also visas to the whole Schengen Zone, have an actual will to return home, and that they will not disappear into the European Union.
The warning had come following an assessment on the operations of Malta's Consulate and visa section in Algiers, the Council has recommended that Malta: 'ensure[s] that applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis, with particular attention paid to the applicant's will to return as evidenced by their individual socio-economic situation in the country of residence'.
The recommendation is not a standard one, and also carried the recommendation that: Malta 'fully applies the provisions on issuing multiple-entry visas, including visas with long validity as provided for in Article 24(2) of the Visa Code, to bona fide applicants who have proven their reliability and integrity, while continuing to carry out more in-depth investigations of first-time applicants'.
That, according to the results of Malta Auditor general on Thursday clearly failed. In fact, during those 18 months, out of the 3,696 people with visas issues by the Algiers consulate, only 882 were found to have returned home. Moreover, out of those 882 that did return home in 32 instances, no corresponding arrival had been identified within the audit period.
These discrepancies, the NAO found, 'must be considered in terms of the regulatory framework that allows for free, unrecorded movement within Schengen'.
There is no doubt that many of those entering Malta and gaining residency and other permits are perfectly innocuous and legitimate people but, on the other hand, others are undoubtedly being admitted into Malta without the proper checks and balances being applied, as also found by the NAO.
After all, with all the citizenship, residency permit and visa issuing controversies the country has been involved in over the last few years, can the government really be in a position to vouch that each and every recipient has been thoroughly vetted as required especially in this day and age? They obviously were not considering how many did not go home after their 'studies'.
In the mix there appears to have been a combination of a market for Schengen visas, a new purveyor in town, a be flight path into Europe, an amateurish set-up at the consulate with lines between operations being severely blurred - all of which creates a hotbed for visa corruption, which appears to have been what happened in Algiers.
from The Malta Independent http://bit.ly/2BfXleV
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