Blaming EU rules

In an article in the International Herald Tribune about how Malta is dealing with illegal immigration, Dan Bilefsky quotes Maltese Governement officials who say that Malta is 'trapped because it must obey EU rules requiring the first country where illegal immigrants land to be responsible for them':

Tourists are greeted with smiles as they fan out of luxury cruise liners in the harbor of this idyllic Mediterranean island. But on the other side of town, newly arrived African 'boat people" get a different message, written in bright orange graffiti near the entrance of a refugee center: "Blacks Go Home.'..

On a migration route between Africa and mainland Europe, this island of 400,000 inhabitants - the second most densely populated country in the world - finds itself on the front line of Europe's spiraling migration crisis. More than 1,822 migrants arrived last year. That may not sound like many. But because of Malta's small size - 316 square kilometers, or 122 square miles - the arrival of 6,000 migrants since 2002 is the per capita equivalent of one million people streaming into Germany..

In Malta, the migrants come primarily from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan - and most land by mistake while trying to reach Italy from Libya, 290 kilometers, or 180 miles, to the south. On Friday, 15 migrants drowned when their boat capsized off the Maltese coast, adding to the hundreds who have died in the past few years. Several corpses have been discovered by local fishermen, their brown skin bleached white by the sun and the sea salt, their eyes gouged out by seagulls. So many bodies have been found that some locals say they are afraid to eat the fish.

Maltese officials say the country, which joined the EU in 2004, is trapped because it must obey EU rules requiring the first country where illegal immigrants land to be responsible for them and determine whether they should be granted asylum or sent home. Even if the majority of the migrants do not want to be here, the government cannot afford to repatriate them. Malta's larger EU neighbors, struggling with their own swelling migrant populations, do not want them either...