Closing the door. (Immigration--Europe).

Migration into Europe has grown in the last decade, since the end of the Cold War and the growth of regional conflicts, and many countries are trying to stem the flow by changing the rules for admission.

In 2002, Denmark tightened its immigration and asylum rules. Under the new legislation, permanent-resident permits will be granted after seven years instead of three, and full welfare benefits will be denied for that period. Non-Danes can no longer be re-united with their spouses, and residents are no longer allowed to bring in a foreign spouse who is under 24 years of age, a move aimed at halting arranged marriages. The government reacted to complaints from Danes that asylum-seekers were taking advantage of the country's social welfare programs. The anti-immigrant Danish People's Party won the support of 12% of voters in the November 2001 general election; this, in a country with a long-standing reputation for generosity and compassion.

Almost immediately, Sweden, which thinks Denmark's immigration policy is too harsh, saw a sharp rise in the number of asylum-seekers turning up on its doorstep.

Elsewhere, the welcome mat is being pulled inside--the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, all have brought in stricter regulations.

An updated immigration law in Italy requires new arrivals to have signed work contracts with employers before they are allowed into the country. Italy also approved a measure allowing the destruction of confiscated ships used by illegal migrants. (In March 2002, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the country's immigration problem had become so bad that Italians risk being outnumbered by immigrants. But, that was more than a slight exaggeration. Census figures show that while the number of foreigners has tripled in the last decade, Italy is behind the European average: only 1.75% of the population of 56 million was foreign in 2001, compared with the European average of 5%.)

Britain and Italy announced plans in 2001 for a joint initiative to cut off the flow of illegal immigrants into Western Europe through the Balkans and punish gangs responsible for smuggling people. The plan includes joint immigration patrols and tougher sentences for smugglers, in response to the growing number of migrants--estimated at 50,000 in the first 10 months of 2000--who pass through Bosnia on their way to the West. The route has become one of the busiest transit points for illegal immigrants from Iraq, China, and Eastern Europe, responsible for as much as 10% of Europe's illegal immigrants, according to the United Nations.

A new law in Spain in 2001 tightened the immigration system there. The aim is to regulate the numbers of immigrants, change the attitudes of employers used to relying on illegal workers, and crack down on the crooks who smuggle them in. It also makes provision for expelling illegals: that requires agreements with their home countries, which feel a little uneasy about the move. Ecuador, for example has an estimated 150,000 illegals in Spain, and the cost of taking them back would be enormous, so Spain offered to pay their fares and send them back in batches of 40,000 a year. The British government is also paying people to leave, offering Afghan asylum-seekers as much as $6,000 per family to go back home.

Germany has passed a new immigration law too. In 2001, two out of every three Germans felt too many foreigners were arriving. The new rules tighten asylum procedures and restrict family reunification. (But skilled workers who are in short supply are encouraged to immigrate.)

In France, the fiercely anti-immigrant politician Jean-Marie Le Pen put the wind up everybody when he finished second in the 2002 presidential election. The right-wing extremists, such as Le Pen, are against all immigration, while most of the moderates are just against the estimated flood of 500,000 illegal immigrants a year getting into the continent. They include Kurds, Afghans, and Pakistanis who land from leaky fishing boats on the Italian coast, Nigerians and Senegalese who cross the Strait of Gibraltar in tiny vessels from Morocco to southern Spain, and Eastern Europeans who slip across the Polish border into Germany. As in Canada and the United States, those who make it to Europe, claim political asylum. Many of those who aren't accepted simply disappear into existing immigrant communities; once in one European Union country it isn't difficult to move into another.

All this has European leaders concerned: In June 2002, at a weekend summit in Seville, Spain, 15 European Union leaders approved plans to boost border controls. They also agreed to work toward a common asylum policy and press poor countries to cooperate in controlling migrant flows. They talked about some controversial approaches, including penalties against poor countries that don't cooperate with European efforts to limit the flow of illegal migrants and incentives for those that do. While they acknowledge the need for immigration, they are against illegals and smuggling of people. They are thinking about creating a Europe-wide database of job offers and a simplified system of work and residence permits along the lines of the U.S. Green Card. If something isn't done to control illegal immigration, the more liberal and centrist governments are afraid that extreme right-wing groups will feed on growing fears among voters, real or imagined, to make political gains. As Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said at the summit: "Without a response from the European governments, it will be increasingly easy for political formations with a xenophobic (extremely nationalistic) approach to win public support."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Instead of punishing illegal immigrants, Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says rich countries should be providing poor countries with aid and development so their citizens are not desperate to leave in the first place. Research how Western countries have and can continue to organize projects in Third World countries that might achieve this goal.

2. As one German writer sees it finding a humanitarian way to meet the challenges of global migration is a key question for the future. But sealing off borders is not the answer. "As long as we live in a world with war, human-rights violations, economic injustice, and growing environmental destruction, flight, and migration will be inevitable," writes Pitt yon Bebenburg in Frankfurter Rundschau. The author quotes a Munich sociologist and globalization analyst, Ulrich Beck, who's in favour of "abolishing the European double standard that does not apply to people in other countries, standards which Europe defines and protects as essential to the dignity of man." Discuss the morality of this double standard, and how eliminating it might affect the quality of life for Europeans in particular, and the rest of the Western world in general.

At Sangatte, a refugee centre on the French
side of the Channel Tunnel to Britain, hundreds
of Kurdish and Afghan refugees try to
hop on freight trains through the tunnel to
Britain every night, looking for a better life.
They prefer Britain, which allows them to
start working after six months, and does not
require identification cards for its citizens as
France does.

FACT FILE

In 1997, 1.3 million immigrants received legal status in EU countries.

The European Union with twelve times Canada's population admits fewer than four times as many immigrants.

Although several coalition governments in Europe include far right support (Italy, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands), rightwing thinking has not become a mass movement. The Economist reports that "In Germany, despite occasional outbursts in bleak cities and states, (the far right) has never taken off nationally; nor has it in Britain. In Spain, Portugal, and Greece it hardly exists. In Nordic countries it is still generally weak."

In 1997, Britain's National Research Council reported that, overall, immigration had reduced the wages of groups competing with immigrants--predominantly low-paid people--by 1% to 2%.

Much of the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the extreme-right National Front in France, was credited to voter apathy, with more than half of voters reporting little or no interest in the 2002 presidential campaign a week before voting.

Denmark was the first country to sign the 1951 UN refugee convention.

FAMILIAR REFRAIN

In the European Union, the population is declining and aging rapidly. Overall population is expected to fall by five million in 25 years and by 40 million by 2050, according to 2000 estimates. It is also aging at an unprecedented rate: A United Nations study says the EU will need 13.5 million new immigrants every year to keep the ratio of workers to pensioners steady.

According to research by the International Data Corporation and Microsoft, by 2003, Europe will lack 1.7 million technology workers. The situation will be at its worst in the United Kingdom, which had 50,000 IT vacancies in 2000 but only about 18,000 graduates coming out of the universities. Training unskilled workers would take at least five years.

ON THE PLUS SIDE

A midst the backlash against immigration, foreigners sometimes are blamed for problems that have nothing to do with them; problems such as unemployment, for example. Far from being a drain on Western economies, researchers in Europe and the United States have found that immigrant populations fuelled the postwar European boom. And, in more stable times, the popular belief that they take jobs away from local people is false. The Cato Institute, a Washington-based public policy research foundation, along with other think tanks, has proven that "immigrants have practically no negative effect in the labour market on any person except other immigrants." (That's largely because immigrants tend to do jobs that no one else wants.) According to a recent article in the World Press Review (reprinted from the Hindustan Times and written by Vipul Mudgal), Western countries will continue to need more immigrants to cope with labour shortages, in professional as well as unskilled areas. The German government, for example, estimates that the country needs 50,000 foreigners every year to take up white-collar jobs in industry. (And, that's largely because of aging populations.) In the face of right-wing pressure to pursue anti-immigrant policies, the author says EU members actually "need qualified foreign workers to be able to stay in global competition. Globalization demands free movement of capital and subsequently of labour."

An article in The Economist, in March 2001, points out that Britain has introduced fast-track work permits in industries with the worst shortages. France has eased rules that made it almost impossible for companies to hire foreigners. Countries such as Italy and Ireland, which used to export workers, urgently need immigrants to fill jobs. France cannot recruit enough qualified locals to maintain its public buildings or serve in its restaurants. Germany's employers' union says 1.5 million more skilled workers are needed there. Australia already relies on foreign labour for a quarter of its work force, Switzerland for nearly a fifth, and the United States for about a sixth.

Similarly, Spain exported labour until the 1970s, but as Spaniards grew richer and better educated, they snubbed menial jobs in farming, domestic service, and construction. Although unemployment is high, Spaniards still refuse to do some jobs. The situation is the same in Portugal, which also exported labour for decades; in the 1960s up to 100,000 Portuguese emigrated every year. Now, migrants come from Central and Eastern Europe and ex-colonies in Africa to meet labour shortages, but it's become a hot political issue. A new law hopes to discourage illegal immigration by issuing temporary work permits, based on labour needs. Critics see that as sheer exploitation, and they say it's an illusion to think that immigrants will go home when their work permits run out.

While some Europeans are concerned about too much immigration, others think it should be encouraged. The argument becomes one not of immigration, but of legal versus illegal immigration. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair says, legal immigration "can and does bring real and substantial benefits to countries, including Britain." With that in mind, Britain broadened its system of work permits, which allows people to enter the country at the request of employers: now highly skilled foreigners are allowed to immigrate without the backing of employers. The government is also looking at ways of increasing the flow of less skilled legal immigrants. Employers, of course, are all for higher immigration levels to fill labour shortages, often at lower wages.

Websites

Centre for European Migration
and Ethnic Studies--http://www.cemes.org/

European Council on Refugees
and Exiles--http://
www.ecre.org/seville/

RefugeeNet--http://www.
refugeenet.org/