The report concludes by recommending the cheaper strategy that is always resorted to by today’s politicians, to make the natives feel guilty for wishing to preserve the country they love.
On 17 July, the Guardian newspaper published a 12 page graphic comic entitled “The Unwanted,” written by Joe Sacco, a Maltese citizen who presently lives in Oregon. “The Unwanted,” which can be read here, purports to describe the cultural, political and logistical problems being caused in Malta by large-scale illegal immigration from Africa.
Sacco’s parents were socialists, and emigrated to Australia in the 1960s to escape the influence of the Catholic church — a hugely powerful institution in Malta, where abortion and divorce are still illegal. The parental antinomianism appears to have rubbed off on their son, because his views tend towards the conventionally leftwing, with other graphic offerings to his name about the travails of Bosnia and Gaza.
“The Unwanted” does make some effort to understand the concerns of the native Maltese. Nevertheless, the overall impression is one of finger-wagging at the smallest member state of the European Union, which it joined in 2004 at the instigation of the humorously-entitled Nationalist Party, led by Lawrence Gonzi, who has been Prime Minister since 2004 (he was narrowly re-elected in March 2008). Sacco’s comic is the least annoying in a long line of denunciatory Guardian features, all of which bear typically didactic titles like “Voyage to Compassion,” “Malta’s Mash of Civilizations,” and “Hysteria is no answer to the plight of refugees.”