‘Mela jien inqas’? The Budget’s answer to TCNs

There was an old Maltese expression for protesting that you were being treated as less deserving than the next fellow. It had a reference to skin colour, and that aspect sorely deserves retirement, for all that the underlying sentiment remains useful: ‘mela jien inqas’ (am I worth less)?’

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana has supplied an answer with the Budget. He invited many people to kindly have their passports ready, and prepare an expectation that the door should not hit them on the way out, much to the glee of the proto-racists and wannabe Klansmen who hunt among us.

The Budget brought the familiar distribution of government largesse: tax cuts for parents, pension increases, subsidies, and the much-touted super bonus. Up to a thousand euro, it was said, adorned with the opportunity to be suitably grateful to the people returning some of your own money to you.

The adjective “super” presumably covers the gratitude surcharge.

Some of the measures will help people who need help, which any decent government is obliged to do; it need hardly be said, so cheers for that, Caruana.

I, for one, will take my pension increase but not consider myself obliged to frame a photograph of Prime Minister Robert Abela. Public money, earned through honest work, does not acquire a Labour Party membership card on its way through the Treasury back to me.

But do let’s look past the gaudy gift wrapping and the counters laden with the gifts to be wrapped in it.

There is another counter, the one where the people who help keep this place running are presented with their bill for the privilege of doing that.

For many of them, the affected third-country nationals (TCNs), riding the bus to their job will soon cost around €33 a month. A B or B1 driving licence, attracts an €83 monthly charge. New childcare registrations lose the free service; children already enrolled are spared, thankfully. Trump’s inspiration didn’t carry over into small kids being taken away from their friends.

The work-permit application rises to €800, with a €400 annual tariff payable on application or renewal. Apparently, being useful to the Maltese economy is now a subscription service, another version of Pay As You Earn, perhaps.

To put it in stark focus, consider two carers travelling to the same shift. Same bus, same destination, same work awaiting them. One travels free. The other pays because they fail the government’s test of deservingness.

Does the second carer occupy more road? Produce more exhaust? Require an individually upholstered seat?

Or is the distinction easier to understand once you stop looking for a transport policy and start looking for an audience?

We have spent years congratulating ourselves on an economy hungry for workers. Businesses need staff; landlords need tenants; the national accounts need another helping of growth. The people supplying the labour are welcome at every point, as long as somebody can make money from them and anyone who whines about immigrants taking up space can, well, whine elsewhere.

The childcare restriction is particularly choice. We want their parents’ labour, especially at bargain rates, but we make the arrangements that allow them to work more expensive. A government capable of spotting the connection between childcare and employment when addressing one family type develops wilful myopia when considering a different one.

And please spare me the discovery that infrastructure costs money. Of course it does. So does the infrastructure used by employers, property owners and the rest of us. Why should a worker’s nationality make that worker a particularly convenient recipient of an additional invoice?

There are serious questions about population, recruitment and the capacity of this small island. Of course there are. Ask them. Make employers answer for abusive recruitment. Enforce decent employment standards. Explain what growth we can sustain and what services it requires.

But that involves governing, and doesn’t allow TCNs to look targeted. Finding a category of people with little political clout and making their lives dearer, or less pleasant, involves considerably less effort.

So, when the question is asked ‘mela jien inqas?’, the decent answer would be no. This budget provides the wrong one, in black and white.