Prime Minister of Malta: This is Home!

In Malta there is a growing number of stranded migrants; men, women, and children living a precarious existence with very limited rights, constantly at risk of exploitation and abuse. Almost all are rejected asylum‐seekers who have been in Malta for many years, unable to be returned home through no fault of their own.

I believe that it serves no useful purpose, for the individuals concerned or for Malta, to keep people, no matter their legal status, in a limbo situation forever.

With this letter, I urge Malta's Prime Minister to:

• Establish a legal pathway to regularisation for all rejected asylum seekers who have lived in Malta for 5 years or more and have not been returned to their country through no fault of their own.
  
• Ensure that the criteria for qualification for regularisation are clear and public and not based only on proof of employment and self‐sufficiency, but take all an individual’s integration efforts and links to Malta into account.
  
• Draw up legal rules to regulate both the application and the decision‐making procedure, which provide adequate guarantees of fairness, independence and impartiality.
  
• Grant clear legal rights to those who qualify for regularisation, as well as to those who today benefit from THPN, which will allow them to live with dignity and to work towards more permanent forms of status, such as long‐term residence, in Malta.
  
• Make sure that, whatever the changes to the procedure for renewal, there is no reduction in the rights and benefits of those who today enjoy THPN.