Frankly, I can’t tell if the Malta Independent has published a news article or an opinion piece with this title: Are asylum seekers illegal immigrants?
What alien entering a country such as Malta would enter with any other story than he/she was seeking asylum? They are not stupid. So, I say they are illegal aliens until proven otherwise.
There must be a lot of people who agree with me and thus the Open Borders word-police are trying to regain control of the language with this below.
From the Malta Independent:
Asylum seekers who arrive in Malta by boat are neither engaging in illegal activity, nor are they immigrants. [Aliens then?—ed]
The UN Refugee Convention (to which Malta is a signatory) recognises that refugees have a right to enter a country for the purposes of seeking asylum, irrespective of how they arrive or whether they hold valid travel or identity documents.
The Convention, to which Malta is legally bound, stipulates that what would usually be considered as illegal actions, such as entering a country without a visa, should not be treated as illegal if a person is seeking asylum.
This means that it is incorrect to refer to asylum seekers who arrive without authorisation as “illegal”, as they in fact have a right to enter the country to seek asylum.
In line with Malta’s obligations under the Convention, Malta permits unauthorised entry into the country for the purposes of seeking asylum. Asylum seekers do not break any Maltese laws simply by arriving on boats or without authorisation. [Let’s see—five paragraphs say the very same thing in each one, do you dummies get the message now?—ed]
Such allowances are made because it is not always safe or practicable for asylum seekers to obtain travel documents or travel through authorised channels.
For new readers, here is our archive on Malta. We follow the illegal alien issue there regularly because the US State Department has brought thousands of illegal alien men, like the one in the photo, to your towns and cities as “refugees” in a perversion of international refugee law.