Identity Malta has lowered its financial resources requirement for third country nationals seeking residence permits for family members in Malta.
The adjustment comes following a ruling by the Immigration Board of Appeal (IBA) that found Identity Malta’s original benchmark figure to be skewed.
Identity Malta revised its definition of stable resources to €15,354 a year including €3,070 for each family member.
Third country nationals were previously required to earn €19,000 a year, as well as €3,800 extra for each family member to keep dependents in the country, figures which did not include bonuses or overtime. The policy had made headlines two years ago when the parents of more than 40 children were told they did not have enough money to keep their children in the country.
The archbishop and other public figures defended the children’s right to stay while the authorities insisted that those that did not meet the requirements of the financial policy risked living in poverty and had to go.
The year-long wait for appeals to be decided proved too difficult for some families
Parents appealed the evictions and, in February, the IBA revoked the eviction order of 18 of the children, ruling that Identity Malta was wrong in using the national average of the basic salary for the whole country as a definition for stable resources.
“Logically, the average annual gross wage when taking account of the income of the entire Maltese workforce would result in a massively inflated figure,” the IBA ruling read.
“One would end up comparing third-country nationals who ordinarily, but not exclusively, earn wages closer to the lower end of the spectrum to people who earn in the high tens of thousands,” it added.
When mentioning the “average annual gross wage”, as referred to in the Labour Force Survey published by the NSO, Identity Malta should have made reference to the average annual gross wage for one category of employment or another, rather than the average annual gross wage for the entire country, it contended.
The year-long wait for appeals to be decided proved too difficult for some families who felt they had no choice but to drop their cases and return to their country.