Immigration to Malta

[citation needed] By the beginning of 2021, figures released by Malta's National Statistics Office showed that 20% of Maltese residents, or 103,718 people were foreigners.

[citation needed] As of the end of 2020, the most popular location for foreigners to live in Malta was St Paul's Bay, where non-Maltese nationals made up 52% of the population.

[4][5] A genetic study by Capelli et al. indicates that Malta was barely inhabited at the turn of the tenth century and was likely to have been repopulated by settlers from Sicily and Calabria who spoke Siculo-Arabic, the progenitor of modern Maltese.

Modern historiography thus contest the traditional "Christian continuity thesis", positing instead a period of total depopulation of Malta at the end of the late antiquity.

[9] As a result of this favourable environment, Muslims continued to demographically and economically dominate Malta for at least another 150 years after the Christian conquest.

By the end of the 15th century all Maltese Muslims would be forced to convert to Christianity and had to find ways to disguise their previous identities by Latinizing or adopting new surnames.

As a consequence of this, Capelli et al. found in 2005 that "the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy, including Sicily and up to Calabria.

Together with the Knights, in 1530, 400 (or up to several thousands according to other sources) Rhodian sailors, soldiers and slaves moved to Malta, possibly bringing along the few Byzantine words in Maltese language.

At the same time, overpopulation and poverty pushed the Maltese to emigrate well into the 1960s and 70s, particularly to other British colonies such as Australia, South Africa, Canada and Egypt, but also to Great Britain, Gibraltar, Corfu and the United States.

Landing of Sub-Saharan asylum seekers grew from 2001 onwards, particularly of citizens of Somalia, Nigeria, Eritrea Membership of the European Union in 2004 led to the growth of a community of Maltese in Belgium, while skilled workers from other EU (Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, Sweden) and non-EU countries (Serbia, Pakistan) moved to Malta to contribute to the growing industries, from construction to hotel services, banking and ICT.

Malta's EU accession also prompted a renewed public discussion about Maltese identity and its role of bridge between Europe and the Mediterranean.

As noted by Schembri in 2004, the Maltese tended to stress their belonging to Europe as a way of distinguishing themselves from North Africans, and the public debate on immigration has reflected entrenched xenophobic stereotypes.

[17] The number of residence and work permits delivered by the Maltese authorities has steadily grown since, in particular under the Labour governments since 2013, from 653 in 2014 to 32,106 in 2021, with an average of 17,000 and a cumulative total of 134,324 in the 2014-2021 period.

[20] In 2011, the main foreign place of birth of residents in Malta included the United Kingdom (10,480) and other former British colonies like Canada (1,766) and Australia (4,354), as well as Italy (1,511), USA (1,246), Somalia (1,003) and Germany (951).

This means that to enter the country: Historically Malta gave refuge (and assisted in their resettlement) to eight hundred or so East African Asians who had been expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin and to just under a thousand Iraqis fleeing Saddam Hussein's regime.

[30] A Refugee Act was passed in Malta only in 2001, replacing the Catholic Church-based Emigrant Commission, which had till then partnered with UNHCR.

Between 2008 and 2012 Malta received, on average, the highest number of asylum seekers compared to its national population: 21.7 applicants per 1,000 inhabitants.

Most of them intended to reach mainland Europe and happened to come to Malta due to their sub-standard vessels breaking down or being caught by Maltese and other EU officials.

[46] Malta has in the past considered adopting a push-back policy towards approaching migrants, pushing their boats back to Libya.

[citation needed] On September 7, 2020, Amnesty International alleged that the Government of Malta used "illegal tactics" against immigrants for dealing with the arrival of refugees from the sea.

Under these escalation of tactics Maltese authorities may have involved criminal acts being committed, resulting in avoidable deaths, prolonged arbitrary detention and illegal returns to war-torn Libya.

[53] The criticism came after an incident in July 2020 where Maltese authorities took 33 hours to mount a rescue mission after receiving a distress call from a dinghy carrying 95 migrants from Eritrea.

[54] In January 2014 Malta started granting citizenship for a €650,000 contribution plus investments, contingent on residence and criminal background requirements,[55] under the Individual Investor Programme.

Malta's Data Protection Commissioner confirmed that the publication of the number of passport buyers and their country of origin "may prejudice relations with a number of the countries of origin" and that revealing the agencies that handled their application "could reasonably be expected to prejudice commercial interests and, ultimately, the competitiveness of approved agents as it would reveal commercially-sensitive information".