Front line

By virtue of its geography, this 112-square-mile rock is now on the front line of the EU's battle to stem illegal immigration, writes Aidan Jones in Christian Science Monitor:

Since 2002, the Maltese government has processed 11,500 refugees and economic migrants. In a bid to shut the Mediterranean door to Europe, the EU's 27 leaders have pledged to tighten border controls and fill gaps in the labor market with workers from their nations. Yet the boats keep coming, challenging the dangerous seas and stepped-up EU sea and air patrols.

Each crossing season, roughly between March and September, brings a ratcheting-up of racial tension as the patriotic, ethnically homogenous, and highly politicized Maltese clash with the migrants. Anti-immigrant graffiti is now common on the sandstone walls of Valletta, Malta's capital..

Malta is the only EU nation to automatically detain all illegal migrants for up to 18months – there are currently 2,000 in the ramshackle camps. It is a policy widely condemned as inhumane and potentially in violation of the Geneva Convention..

Existing European rules – known as the Dublin II Convention – say Hassan cannot move from the country where he claimed asylum. The center-right Nationalist Party government is frantically lobbying the European Commission to revise the law; it says the island's resources have been stretched to breaking point by the sudden migrant influx...