Station to nowhere

Malta offers a way station to nowhere, writes Jennifer Carlile in MSNBC:

A migrant flood has overwhelmed the tiny sun-splashed island nation of Malta over the past five years, stirring charges of human-rights violations, taxing the nation’s tiny navy and fueling xenophobia. The rocky archipelago, about 55 miles off the coast of Sicily, is best known as a tourist destination. But the start of summer brings mostly African migrants, crossing the Mediterranean in rickety overcrowded boats, on their way to seeking a better life in Europe. Boatloads appear almost daily. "All of a sudden we saw quite a phenomenon; hundreds and hundreds of migrants started appearing in our waters," said Lt. Col. Emmanuel Mallia, the officer in charge of Malta's air, land and sea operations...Escape from the island is near impossible. "Malta's a stone in the sea," said Somali immigrant Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan, who has dreams of living elsewhere in Europe or even the United States..

Further fueling tensions are worries that terrorists could use Malta as a jumping-off point for attacks in Europe. In April, it was reported that a Libyan terrorist arrested in Britain made it from Malta to the United Kingdom in 2002 after paying smugglers 2,000 British pounds ($3,977). The man, identified as "AS" is "an Islamic extremist who has engaged actively and as a senior member with a terrorist group clearly engaged in support work for jihadist activities," wrote Britain's Special Immigration Appeals Commission, adding that his cell was probably about to go into the operational stage of an attack in Europe.

Immigrants “are heading for Europe because it’s like the American dream; they’re just taking advantage of us,” said Martin Degiorgio, spokesperson for the Republican National Alliance, adding that even genuine refugees could have opted to go to other African countries. If migrants can’t be repatriated, “we cannot allow them out of (closed) detention centers,” said Degiorgio, whose license plate reads “DVX”, which is Latin for “Duce,” the title adopted by Italy's World War II fascist leader Benito Mussolini...

More from MSNBC: ‘We can't go forward and we can't go back’- Hundreds of migrants live communally in a field near Malta's main airport; From Deutsche Welle: Human Rights Groups Slam EU Migration Policies.