How did we come to this, exactly?

Right, that’s it. I have decided to write to the Olympic Committee, to suggest they include a new event at their next games. ‘Justifying the unjustifiable’. I can see it already: the most spectacular Olympic display since Jesse Owens. Athletes performing dazzling feats of mental gymnastics... pole-vaulting to conclusions, sidestepping accusations, juggling explanations, clearing hurdles... all in a mad race to the very lowest dregs of human depravity.

It would be a mini-Olympics all unto itself. And the best part of it is... we’d win gold every time. There is no nation on earth that could possibly compete with us on this score.

Take the Prime Minister’s justification of his plan to deport several families – some with children aged as young as six and nine – to their war-torn African country of origin... when these people had all been given permits to live and work in Malta by the proper authorities.

It’s hard to imagine a more unjustifiable and despicable action than that, all things considered. It is repulsive on at least three counts: one, because we are inexplicably treating little children as criminals, which is in itself a complete legal absurdity. For criminal action to be taken against someone, that person has to at least be old enough to be considered responsible for his or her actions at law. Children cannot even be tried for a crime for this very reason; how, then, can they possibly be meted punishment without trial?

Two, these people (regardless of age) have not actually broken any law at all (I’ll explain why in a sec). But even if they did, the ordinary procedure requires that they stand trial, where they would have a right to legal counsel, and for their case to be heard by an impartial, independent tribunal. They should be presumed innocent until found guilty. And if found guilty at first instance, they should also have a right to an appeal or review. 

I mean, honestly. These are the single most basic fundamental principles of any justice system. How the hell did we suddenly manage to just forget all about their existence, in our mad zeal to arrest and deport a couple of kindergarten pupils? 

It is the third consideration, however, that makes this impossible to digest without violently throwing up. While our government is busy expelling bona fide residents who have paid taxes for almost a decade, and subjecting prepubescent children to inhuman levels of stress and anxiety... it is also selling Maltese nationality to globe-trotting millionaires who have no conceivable connection to this country at all. What sort of message does the Prime Minister think that sends out to the rest of the world?

But let’s hear the justification first. Joseph Muscat went on record this week stating that “people whose THP-n expires should be deported because they are in Malta illegally, even if they had been in Malta for a long time.”

He also said: “We would have no credibility with the EU if, after we have been insisting so much on the country not being able to take in immigrants, we fail to repatriate immigrants who have been found to be here illegally.”

Sorry, but this is too much. I challenge Dr Muscat, through this article, to explain precisely where, how and in what form any of the 32 deportees acted in any way ‘illegally’. Especially the two Eritrean children who were born in Malta six and nine years ago respectively: care to pinpoint what laws these two tiny tots could possibly have broken, to deserve a treatment usually reserved for criminals?

But I must emphasise that their age and vulnerability are only an extenuating circumstance. The deportation would be just as legally unsound if they were aged 60 or 90.  The fact that we are applying such a drastic measure to such young children does not make the measure more illegal than it already is... though it does make it considerably more vile and despicable.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Those people were not ‘in Malta illegally’. They may have entered the country in an unorthodox way... but they were pursuing a legitimate right accorded to them by the UN Charter of Human Rights, to which Malta is a signatory state. Once here, they followed the correct asylum procedure; the fact that their application was rejected does not affect their legal status one tiny bit... primarily because they were issued with temporary humanitarian protection by the relevant authorities, and their permits have been renewed ever since. 

At no point can those people possibly be accused of breaking the law. Again, I challenge Dr Muscat to prove me wrong. Or anyone else, for that matter. Don’t hold back... step right up to the podium and explain.

Meanwhile, I can’t comment specifically about each particular one of the 32 cases... but even the act of irregularly entering the country is not necessarily illegal to begin with. In many cases, asylum seekers will have been brought here (often against their will) by the Maltese authorities themselves. They will have been rescued at sea, and escorted to Malta by the AFM. 

It is not a crime to find yourself in another country because of the administrative procedures of that country. Otherwise, any foreign yachtsman who needed to be rescued by the AFM, and who would have lost passport along with yacht, would have to be arrested and detained upon safely reaching land. He would have entered the country in exactly the same way as 90% of our ‘illegal immigrants’. So if Roman Abramovic happened to sink his mega-superyacht anywhere within Malta’s Search and Rescue Zone... we’d have to clap him in handcuffs and put him on the next plane to Moscow. Yeah, right. 

Meanwhile we are forgetting that those 32 soon-to-be deportees are here only because we allowed them to stay. At least one of those families had children on that basis. They had been given to understand, through official documentation, that their position as Maltese temporary residents was regular and according to law (which it was). Their children were therefore born to fully documented and legally recognised Maltese residents.

So again, I repeat the challenge. How, in the name of Great Jumping Googly-Mooglies, can their status possibly be described as ‘illegal’? The word can’t even be made to apply to their parents... let alone to children who have no concept of what the law even is. 

Meanwhile, there is another compelling reason to question the legality of this deportation order. If the authorities can arbitrarily revoke legally granted THP-n permits, the holders will from one second to the next find themselves in a state of ‘illegality’ through no fault of their own. How can it possibly be legitimate for the State to simply flip a switch, and instantly transform law-abiding people into ‘criminals’ by means of a single administrative decision? These people have done everything by the book; they played by the rules as they found them... then suddenly, the rules were changed halfway through the game, and they find themselves shown the red card though they committed no foul whatsoever.

Come on. Where’s the Chamber of Advocates when you need them? How can it possibly be that not a single voice in the legal community is raised against what is clearly a perversion of the rule of law? Or do lawyers and the judiciary in this country only ever speak out in defence of their own profession?

And while I’m at it: funny, too, how all our great political moralists have suddenly gone quiet. What happened to Godfrey Farrugia, who was last heard lamenting the collapse of Malta’s moral code because of the morning-after pill? Quite a few mornings have gone by since those two pregnancies came to fruition, you know. Do the rights of children no longer concern you once they’re born? 

And what about the PN, which has howled loud and long at every little fart of a non-issue over the last three years? Does the party of ‘good governance’ and ‘ethical values’ suddenly not have a word to say about the illegal deportation of little children? Or is it only ever scandalised by secret accounts and shady deals of the kind its own members have been hiding for decades?

Now to turn to the truly bizarre aspect of Muscat’s attempt to justify the unjustifiable. He even had the temerity to argue that we would ‘lose credibility with Europe’ if, after complaining that we can’t possibly take in any more immigrants... we then refuse to deport them when we get half the chance.

I invite Dr Muscat to revisit that statement of his, and see for himself how shocking and appalling it would sound to anyone but the most hardboiled advocate of the extreme right. How dare Malta complain to Europe that it has no place for immigrants, when it is openly inviting rich immigrants and their families to buy a Maltese passport for one million euros? The hypocrisy would be outrageous even if we were talking about the deportation of people whose status was genuinely illegal. But seeing as how we’re deporting people who have legally worked and paid taxes here for 10 years or more... what are we saying here, exactly? That Malta has plenty of space for millionaires, but none at all for those a few rungs lower down the economic ladder?

I mean, I always expected to see and hear remarkable things in my lifetime. But not in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to hear that sort of argument from the leader of Malta’s political Left. I reckon even Nigel Farage would baulk at the idea of gloating over the deportation of two little black children – because we just didn’t have enough space for them, damn it – while selling Maltese nationality to the rich and the powerful at a million euros a pop. 

There is, after all, a limit for everything. Even political delinquency.