European Union Approves Harsh Immigration Rules

Maybe it was the 60 cars that young people burned in Vitry-le-François in France on Saturday night (14th). Maybe the European Union is being influenced by the increasingly harsh immigration policies of the U.S. What ever the reason, many people will be affected.

Europe is teeming with immigrants.

The changing laws bring to mind Europe's colonial history - telling the immigrants from former colonies, and other developing nations:

Let us colonize you. Let us buy your country's cheap labor. But don't come visit.
---

EU lawmakers back controversial new immigration rules

By JAN SLIVA
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 18, 2008; 9:42 AM

STRASBOURG, France -- The European Parliament on Wednesday approved controversial new rules for expelling illegal immigrants from the bloc, overcoming opposition from left-leaning lawmakers and ignoring protests from human rights activists.

The move comes amid a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment across the wealthy bloc, with Italy blaming foreigners for a spike in violent crime and France grappling with tensions in the immigrant-heavy suburbs ringing urban centers.

As economic hard times loom in many EU countries, governments are coming under increased pressure to act tough on immigration. Until now, there has been no common EU policy on expelling illegal immigrants, and detention periods varied from 32 days in France to indefinite custody in Britain, the Netherlands and five other countries...

for link to complete article click here

"Why did you leave us behind?"

The NY Times published an article about immigration in Spain. There have been numerous legalizations of undocumented immigrants in Spain and other countries in Europe. For the most part this has helped the Spanish economy, although as usual, there are people that say it will be the end of their country.

The article speaks of problems legalizing, dishonest lawyers, and spiteful employers. However most significant is the story of Mrs. Delgado and her youngest son Allan.

----
Spain Grappling with Illegal Immigrants Tried Forgiveness
June 10, 2008

MADRID — With the United States riven by calls to legalize millions of illegal immigrants, Americans might consider the possible effects by looking at southern Europe, where illegal immigration has abounded and so have forgiveness plans...

In the last two decades, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece have run at least 15 legalization programs, including a Spanish effort three years ago that was among the Continent’s largest. With little domestic opposition, Spain legalized nearly 600,000 of the African, Latin American and eastern European workers who helped power its economy and brought this once insular land the strengths and strains of diversity...

Among the beneficiaries of the legalization policy are Ignacio Cantos and Sandra Delgado, a husband and wife from Ecuador who left four children and an economic crisis in search of Spanish jobs. Legalization has raised their pay and ended their fear of the police, who once jailed Mr. Cantos for lacking work papers.

It has also ended their separation from their youngest child, Allan, a gap-toothed 8-year-old sent with his siblings to live with their grandparents when he was 3. Since arriving in Madrid in March, he has been twirling his mother’s earrings and stroking her hair as if worried that she is a mirage.

“I would never leave my children a second time,” said Ms. Delgado, 38, a nanny who has been raising others’ children while aching for her own. “I’m sorry I did it...”

...[A] visit to Ecuador reminded her of how much she had missed of her children’s lives. “You go back and you don’t find them the way you left them,” she said.

Their income allowed the couple to bring just one child to Spain, and they brought their youngest, Allan. Arriving in March, he found the weather cold, the food strange. Puzzled by his parents’ fourth-floor walk-up, he said, “The houses are high.”

Fearful of losing his mother again, he grows jealous when his father hugs her. He exploded one night when he heard his parents laughing in the next room.

“He ran out of the bathroom and said, ‘You two are happier without me!’ ” Ms. Delgado said. “He still asks us to this day, ‘Why did you leave us behind?’ ”

With another willed smile, she added, “We’re so happy to have at least one of them back.”

for complete NYT article click here

New Customs and Immigration Agency for UK

This may really not be news - but it is good to know that the U.K. is trying to keep up with the U.S.
---

The Guardian - London
9.30am BST update
Smith launches UK Border Agency

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Thursday April 03 2008. It was last updated at 09:33 on April 03 2008.

The new customs and immigration body, the UK Border Agency, was officially launched by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, today.

The UKBA merges the work of 25,000 staff based in 135 countries, who previously operated in the Border and Immigration Agency, HM Revenue and Customs and UK Visas.

Ms Smith will unveil a new logo for the agency, which is geared up to combating smuggling, immigration crime and border tax fraud.

Agency staff will have a wide range of powers to board and search vehicles, aircraft and trains, and to enter premises, seize goods and detain suspects.

Opposition MPs, however, have criticised the government for failing to include police in the newly-merged organisation, calling it a huge rebranding exercise since the body will have no new powers.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The new agency will be the eyes and ears of the police at the border.

"It is committed to working with the police to improve, strengthen and better coordinate the security arrangements at ports and airports."

He pointed out that workers in UKBA will have a wide range of powers to board and search vehicles, aircraft and trains, and to enter premises, seize goods and detain suspects.

The Conservative shadow immigration spokesman, Damian Green, said: "It's the same people doing the same job as they were doing yesterday.

"If the government has to hype up a change to the system like this it is saying the system clearly isn't good enough."

UKBA staff will not all have the same uniform at present, because a new outfit was introduced for Border and Immigration Agency frontline staff a year ago.

The Home Office spokesman said a new uniform would be introduced at a later stage.

for link to Guardian article click the title of this post

Europe's First Immigrants?

She is called "Pioneer Man" or Homo Antecessor - her people immigrated from Western Asia over a million years ago. She was found in a cave in northwestern Spain - thank goodness she isn't from Africa -don't want to scare all the xenophobic Europeans...

Detail of photograph by Juan Herrero/EPA
---

Fossil find could be Europe's first humans

· Find fills gap in knowledge of long march out of Africa
· Possible ancestor of our species and Neanderthals

The Guardian - London
March 27, 2008
James Randerson, science correspondent

A fossilised jawbone and teeth found in a cave in northern Spain may have belonged to one of the first human ancestors to set foot in western Europe. The hominid has been identified as Homo antecessor, or pioneer man, a possible ancestor of both our own species and Neanderthals. The fossils date from between 1.1m and 1.2m years ago.

The find helps fill another gap in our understanding of the long march early humans made out of Africa. Stone tools and animal bones found with the hominid jaw also paint a vivid picture of the life of early cave-dwelling Europeans.

"The timing of the earliest human occupation of Europe has been controversial for many years," said Professor Chris Stringer, an expert in early humans at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved directly in the research. "[This find] suggests that southern Europe began to be colonised from western Asia not long after humans had emerged from Africa - something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago."

The fossils were discovered in the Sima del Elefante cave in Atapuerca in north-western Spain. Along with the hominid remains the research team found 32 rock fragments that were either stone tools or flakes produced by making the tools, suggesting that the hominids used the cave as a workshop among other things. There were numerous animal bones from a variety of species including rats, ferrets, bison, foxes, bears and big cats.

José Bermúdez de Castro at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, a member of the team that uncovered the fossils, said the early humans occupied a lush, warm, green paradise with plentiful water and lots of prey. The animal bones found suggest that humans at the site were eating meat. "We have evidence of cut marks on bones," he said. And in one case the jaw of a cow was broken to get at the succulent marrow inside. The find is detailed in Nature.

The hominid jawbone itself is probably from a female because it is small. Although the jaw fragment is not much to go on, from previous fossils the researchers can guess that the cave people would have been around 1.7 metres high (5ft 7in), with a brain three-quarters the size of ours.

Although the same species has been found at sites close to Sima del Elefante, the team are convinced this find is considerably older. They used three dating techniques to pin-point its age. These are based on past changes in the Earth's magnetic field, the known ages of other mammal species found with the jaw fragment and a new method that uses radioactive decay in sediments.

Not everyone is sure the fossil is H antecessor. The doubt stems from the fact that other finds of the species have not included jawbones for direct comparison.

Backstory

The question of when early humans made it into Europe is controversial. A large fossil collection from Dmanisi, Georgia, is dated to around 1.7m years ago. These are probably Homo erectus, a human species found mainly further east in Asia. Previously the oldest European fossils with convincing dates were from Gran Dolina, close to the new find in Atapuerca, Spain, and from Ceprano in Italy. These are around half the age of the new find.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

for link to Guardian article click the title of this post

How to Keep Immigrants at Home

For those of you who can read Spanish, the article below is about something people have been discussing in the United States regarding immigration. While Gaddafi is not my favorite national leader, the idea is novel. How often have U.S. policymakers said that Mexico should improve its own economy so that its workers can stay at home. Gaddafi is proposing this for Africa, saying that if there are more jobs in their home countries, there will be less people immigrating to Europe.

If only it could be so easy.

-----

Gaddafi ofrece Libia como plataforma para invertir en otros países africanos
El líder libio anima a las empresas a crear riqueza para reducir la inmigración
MIGUEL ÁNGEL NOCEDA - Madrid - 19 diciembre 2007
El Pais


Muammar el Gaddafi se despidió ayer de España dejando una fórmula para acabar con los problemas de la inmigración. El líder libio, que se dejó fotografiar en grupo con los empresarios españoles que le visitaron en El Pardo, ofreció la posibilidad de aprovechar Libia como plataforma para establecer inversiones y negocios en otros países de África. Así, según Gaddafi, se pueden "desarrollar proyectos a todos los niveles, crear empleos y reducir la pobreza". Sabedor de que la inmigración subsahariana es uno de los graves problemas en España y Europa, no dudó en utilizar ese mensaje para ejercer el papel de caudillo continental.

Gaddafi, que no pudo recibir a la delegación empresarial en su jaima por la lluvia, aseguró a los empresarios que Libia ofrece la seguridad jurídica necesaria para garantizar las inversiones. La verdad es que el bocado que ha destapado en este viaje resulta muy apetitoso. El dinero que reporta el petróleo le permite abordar grandes proyectos "para modernizar el país" y al que difícilmente las empresas pueden dar la espalda. De ahí, la expectación empresarial y el entusiasmo gubernamental. Que se lo digan, si no, a Sacyr, que ha firmado un acuerdo para participar en el desarrollo de las infraestructuras en las que Libia invertirá 50.000 millones de euros en tres años. O al grupo petrolero Repsol, que es la primera empresa privada de Libia después de 20 años de presencia. O a Abengoa, que desde hace 19 tiende cableado eléctrico y trabaja en las traídas de aguas. O a Indra, que está haciendo el nuevo sistema de tráfico aéreo del país, o a Conservas Calvo, o a Mantas Mora... Ahora toca afianzar la posición y lograr nuevos contratos.

Pero Gaddafi quiere más. Ayer se mostró especialmente interesado en que estas empresas sirvan de enganche para que también acudan pequeñas y medianas empresas a su país. El presidente de las Cámaras de Comercio, Javier Gómez Navarro, alabó el crecimiento de Libia y tomó el testigo con un abanico de ofertas en turismo, construcción, textil, electrónica, defensa, además de los hidrocarburos o las infraestructuras. Ganas no faltan y experiencia, tampoco.

También puso condiciones. Pidió que se alcance "cuanto antes" un acuerdo para a evitar la doble imposición (que las empresas que invierten no tributen en los dos países), que ya existe en Francia o Alemania. Gómez Navarro se comprometió a interceder ante el Gobierno. Fuentes consultadas manifestaron que está muy avanzado. Además, se ha llevado cuatro acuerdos: el Acuerdo para la Protección Recíproca de Inversiones, que se ha renovado, y otros, con Exteriores, Defensa e Industria.

photo: http://asapblogs.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/19/immigrants2.jpg

article: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Gaddafi/ofrece/Libia/plataforma/invertir/otros/paises/africanos/elpepiesp/20071219elpepinac_19/Tes

UK Immigration: Fear, Mis-Information, and Nativism

The saying about learning a lot when you travel is true - at least for me. In the kind of work that I do, I have to travel fairly often. The last few years I have been working on a research project in Europe - Immigration is something you are faced with constantly if you are visiting the European Union and either watch TV news or read the papers.

As I am riding the subway to the archives or to conduct an interview with another scholar, I see people from many countries, and I think about immigration.

As soon as I walk out of the apartment I’m staying at, I see four restaurants – from Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Spain. I go to an internet café and a young man asks me if I’ll speak English to him – He has immigrated here from Southeast Asia. I see a hand painted poster that says “Pakistan’s Disaster.”

There is talk (mostly on TV) that this neighborhood is full of people who lack good hygiene (that they urinate and defecate in the street). I assume this is true; I do smell urine, kind of like what I smell when I walk around Lower East Side in Manhattan. The place has a gritty feel while it is also chic - in some ways Madrid is so New York.

There are people here from all over the world. All different colors and languages. Yet the only out of control drunks I have seen are local people (not immigrants).

There is a neighborhood initiative to clean things up - stop the crime, not use the sidewalks as restrooms, not leaving trash and beer cans around the plaza. Today I started seeing small black and white posters that are trying to discourage these behaviors.

This neighborhood initiative for safety and cleanliness brings to mind when I moved into the East End Neighborhood in Houston. People from the other side of town would ask me why would I want to live there. Some (so-called) friends made faces when they drove up to my house. My mother wanted me to build a 9 foot fence that encompassed my yard. Everyone got me so paranoid I even stopped a police officer once and asked his opinion on the barrio’s safety. He said it has some problems, but was basically ok.

The paranoia I was experiencing was not new. I believed the negative descriptions of the neighborhood that I would see on TV. It was like a dark continent for me. When I first moved there I would go to the stores and marvel at how everyone spoke Spanish all the time. It seemed so foreign.

But the decision to move there was very logical for me. The mortgage was very affordable, it was in center of the city and It was 1.4 miles to my job. I was tired of commuting. I wanted to live somewhere that I could walk to work if I needed to. People thought that was impossible in Houston – unless you are so rich you can live anywhere.

So, I found a white house with a big front porch. It had some type of artificial siding over clapboard. The deed says it was built in 1920. I think it is older.

And yes, on Sunday afternoons (and many weekend nights) there is very loud music – banda, mariachi, salsa… anything in Spanish. I got some noise reduction head phones for the days its really really loud.

Lots of people walk by everyday. I actually know many of my neighbors. We talk all the time. The gangs don’t bother me – I hear they usually only harm each other. I did get a big black Lab mix., she is a nice dog, but sometimes scares the kids when they walk home from school. One thing I did as soon as I bought the house was put a fence all around the property. I found that people respect fences, even if gates aren’t locked (the chain link fence is only 4 feet tall - most anyone can jump over it, even me). The neighbors say that a fence and a big dog make people respect your property – its a way to "mark your territory" - the boundary can be easily crossed, but that's not the point. It's about respect --- so most everybody’s house has a fence and a dog.

Nothing has been stolen from our yard. The cars haven’t been broken into. The house has remained safe. The neighborhood residents have a real sense of community. They call me "the teacher." The only people that I’m wary of are the skinny white guys who don’t work and seem to be on drugs. The immigrants basically work all the time. Their entertainment is to play loud music while they barbeque and have a beer in the back yard.

The narratives about danger and filth were imaginary… is what they say about this immigrant neighborhood in Madrid the same?

The phantom hordes
Beware scare stories of UK overpopulation: in future we may need all the people we can get

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah
Thursday November 29, 2007
The Guardian (London)

Having already experienced unprecedented immigration in recent years, the UK should, apparently, be bracing itself for millions more in coming decades. Almost all of the coverage of the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) projections has focused on how more immigration could lead to a doubling of the UK population by 2081. But this frenzy is unwarranted and could distract us from far more fundamental challenges.

For a start, there has been little coverage of the huge range in the projections. Look carefully and the total population could be anywhere between 64 and 108 million by 2081, depending on how many children we have, how long we live and how much immigration exceeds emigration. Dig deeper, and you'll see the population could actually fall to 50 million, with no net immigration and no improvements in life expectancy.

We have no reliable way of knowing where in this range we will be in seven decades' time. In 1965, the ONS's predecessor predicted a UK population of 75 million by 2000. Given how far off this proved, we should instead be talking about how to respond to the drivers that will shape population change.

One key factor is an ageing population. The UK-born workforce actually fell last year; this year we will see more pensioners than children in the UK. If we are not careful, there will come a time where there will not be enough British workers doing British jobs to pay for public services and pensions. Even in a full-employment scenario, migrants will need to complement the domestic workforce. It is the composition, not the size, of the population that matters.

The oft-evoked image of hordes of hungry migrants clambering to get into the UK also misunderstands the future drivers of migration. The patterns show that future migrants are more likely be besuited bankers than famished farmers. Indeed, far from trying to limit immigration, there is a good chance the UK will have to compete hard with other developed countries to attract the best and brightest from around the world.

Other potential drivers - global economic inequalities, climate change and war - are unlikely to result in vast numbers coming to the UK. Instead, if improvements in border controls and technology continue, the impacts of such displacement will be felt more by the neighbours of war-torn, poor or environmentally-devastated countries. Uganda will bear the brunt of problems in Rwanda; India will pay the price of flooding in Bangladesh. The developed world, now home to only around one in five of the world's refugees, is unlikely to provide shelter.

The debate about overpopulation also ignores perhaps the most important migration trend in the UK: emigration. Last year, IPPR estimated that there were around 5.5 million British nationals living abroad - more than there are foreigners here. Countries like Australia, home to more than a million Brits, actively scour the world for new migrants. Meanwhile, many in the UK seem not to want to accept this reality.

Perhaps the most worrying assumption is that future migrants will behave like past migrants. While many of those who came to the UK in the 1960s stayed permanently, this is unlikely for today's Poles, in the vanguard of a new generation of circular migrants. In an increasingly mobile world, projections based on old assumptions may be little short of useless.

The more we obsess about how many more people will be crammed into these islands, the greater the risk of us ending up with far fewer people: lonely souls struggling to cope in a brave new world.

· Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is director of research policy at the Institute for Public Policy Research

ippr.org

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2218600,00.html

Immigration Policy Around the Globe

The title of the following article is offensive - but the information is worth having.
----

The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
November 19, 2007 Monday
First Edition
Fear of 'migrant hordes' gazumped by need for cheap labour;
EYE ON EUROPE
James Button - Europe correspondent.


Migrants are pouring in to Western Europe, despite public disquiet.

IN THE past three years, as Britain has experienced the largest wave of immigrants in its history, opinion polls have shown a big increase in the number of people who are alarmed about immigration. The Conservative Party accordingly pledges to cut migrant numbers, while rattled Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown talks of "British jobs for British workers" - a slogan that was once linked to the far-right British National Party.

The parties look to be vying with each other to build Fortress Britain. Yet it has not happened.

Brown promises tighter skilled migration quotas and better border control to reduce illegal immigration, but neither will dramatically affect numbers. The Conservatives struggle to specify which categories of immigrants they would cut. Meanwhile the British National Party, for all the fears of Labour MPs in working-class seats where the BNP is strongest, simply fails to rise.

It is not just Britain. Three in four Americans say they want more controls on immigration, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey. Yet neither main party in the US plans to seriously wind back legal immigration: the United States continues to take a million migrants a year.

The Pew Research Centre polled 45,000 people in 47 rich and poor countries and found that in 44 of them, majorities believed "we should restrict and control entry of people into our country more than we do now." (Australians, who were not polled, seem to be comfortable with their current high levels of immigration.)

Nevertheless, Spain, where 77% of people want more controls, is running a huge immigration program, with 4 million newcomers since 1996. Immigration to Italy is even larger - 700,000 a year - and 87% of people want more controls. Yet Prime Minister Romano Prodi has urged Italians to embrace the first mass immigration in their history.

What is going on? Are politicians totally out of step with the public, and is a reversal of policy therefore just a matter of time?
Perhaps, but I doubt it. Immigration is a fact of modern life and, despite periods of public unease, almost certain to remain so. That unease is hardly new. Arthur Calwell, the architect of Australia's postwar immigration program, was terrified of a backlash to his policy, and polls in the 1960s regularly showed that eight out of 10 Britons thought too many black people were entering the country.

If governments have dared defy public opinion, it is not out of brotherly love for foreigners but for hard-nosed economic reasons: to run factories and farms, to get streets swept.

Since the factories closed down in the 1970s and 1980s, Europe has struggled to integrate a mass of unskilled migrant workers and their children but even as it debates the perceived failures of integration, the clamour for new workers in new industries resumes.

Romanians, whose 500,000-strong presence in Italy is provoking huge hostility, are vital to the country's agriculture and aged-care sectors. Britain's biggest nursing home provider, the Southern Cross Healthcare Group, says it must have foreign workers because locals will not do the jobs (the pay is too poor). Without foreign doctors and nurses, former prime minister Tony Blair once said, the National Health Service could not run.

Could this new mobility of global workers be stopped? Yes, but probably not while the economy is good.

Many European countries are also experiencing high levels of emigration. Last year the Netherlands took 100,000 people but lost 130,000, while 200,000 Britons left last year - the highest figure in postwar history. Many of the leavers are skilled and must be replaced. Yet they are far less likely than earlier migrants to stay in their adopted countries. At least half the 400,000 Poles who have come to Britain in recent years are expected to go home.

The proportion of skilled immigrants is growing, and so is the number of countries from which migrants come. In Britain, whereas the first postwar migrations mainly comprised Pakistanis, Indians and West Indians, a report from the Institute of Public Policy Research names 18 groups of immigrants (including Australians) with populations of about 100,000 or more. As Australia's experience shows, more groups with fewer people in each makes the formation of so-called ethnic enclaves very difficult.

It would be wrong to be utopian. Immigration comes with costs, most of all to immigrants themselves, but also, disproportionately, to the poorer communities among whom many settle. There is evidence immigration is driving down low-skilled wages in Britain. Working-class concerns that it frays old social bonds should not be simply dismissed as racism.
Understandably, governments will want to manage migration in hard economic times or to ease public concern. They also have the right to make demands of migrants, such as language learning, which most want to do anyway. As Dutch sociologist Paul Scheffer says, if you demand nothing of migrants, "the veiled message is: you will never be part of this society". However, "when you make demands of newcomers, the receiving society also undertakes an obligation".

Over 50 years, millions of migrants have transformed and enriched Western societies, without provoking vast upheavals. Even so, British migration specialist Professor John Salt estimates that only 3% of the global population are migrants - a figure that has not risen for nearly 20 years. Australia is next door to 230 million, mostly poor, Indonesians, yet only a handful have ever tried to go to Australia.

There is no human tide overwhelming the West. Most people prefer to stay home.
James Button is Europe correspondent.

European Views on the Blue Card and Immigration

Since most anti-immigration people do not take reports from U.S. universities or policy organizations seriously. Perhaps a report from someone who was previously at the World Bank would be of help.

Below are only excerpts from von Weizsäcker's report, which was released in 2006, but still highly relevant. The complete text can be found at:

http://www.strategie.gouv.fr/revue/IMG/pdf/article_JakobVonWeizsacker2.pdf





The author is:

Jakob von Weizsäcker, a German citizen, joined Bruegel from the World Bank inWashington (2002-2005) where he was Country Economist for Tajikistan.Previously, he worked for the Federal Economics Ministry in Berlin (2001-2002) where he headed the office of a junior minister and Vesta, a venture capital firm(2000-2001). Before that, he held research positions at the Center for Economic Studies in Munich and CIRED in Paris.

Bruegel is a business focused economic policy think tank in Brussels. Bruegel.org

-----

A European Card Proposal
by Jakob von Weizsäcker
Horizons Strategiques
Centre de'analyse strategique
July 2006


This contribution argues that the EU should open up to skilled immigrants through a points system via a European “Blue Card” granting access to its entire labour market. This European version of the Green Card could become a powerful complement to any national effort to attract top talent. In addition, students graduating with a Masters degree or equivalent from European universities or from top universities abroad should be automatically eligible for a Blue Card. This “Blue Diploma” would help attract young talent early. Finally, in future rounds of EU enlargement, higher-skilled workers should be
welcome immediately, provided they reach an earnings threshold: the “External Minimum Wage”. To motivate the discussion, a tentative explanation why countries like Germany and France are lagging behind in the global competition for talent is provided. In Section 2, the basic facts of migration, its skill content, and the increasing supply of skills worldwide are examined. In Section 3 the basic efficiency and distribution arguments for and against high and low-skilled migration are analysed. The impact of emigration - “brawn drain” and “brain drain” - on developing source countries is also discussed. Finally, Section 4 proposes potential policy options for Europe...

Over the coming years, migration rates and migration pressures might well increase further. Globalisation is rapidly “shrinking” the world without shrinking worldwide income differences quite as fast. There are concerns in Europe over this influx of immigrants, and low-skilled immigrants in particular. At the same time, to become a competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy as spelled out in the Lisbon agenda, Europe will need to become much better at attracting talent from the rest of the world. The European Commission has accordingly become active in this area (Box 1).However, progress has been slow. Some of the reasons for this have already been mentioned in the previous section. In addition, many relevant stakeholders still use problematic economic concepts to discuss migration, most importantly the “lump-of-labour” fallacy according to which the number of jobs in an economy is fixed. This policy brief argues that the issue of economic migration should instead be framed in terms of the skill level of immigrants.

...Immigration rates in the EU-15 and the US remained at relatively moderate levels during the 1960s,1970s, and most of the 1980s, as shown in Chart 1. Migration rates only shot up in the late eighties and early nineties. They rose again substantially in the early 2000s in Europe in particular, driven by immigration to the EU-15 from Eastern Europe. In addition, there is significant illegal immigration...

As one particular variant of the Blue Card, an entirely qualification-based “Blue Diploma” could be introduced. Any graduate of a Masters programme (or equivalent) from a participating university could be made eligible for a Blue Card by virtue of his or her degree. Such a comprehensive and predictable arrangement would greatly help to attract foreign talent to European universities and to the European labour market afterwards. In principle, it would make sense to extend Blue Diplomas to universities outside Europe also. For a start, the top 100 non-European universities, as measured by academic excellence, should also be included in the scheme.

Even from a development perspective, the Blue Diploma could turn out to be beneficial. By providing guaranteed access to the European labour market without requiring a permanent presence, circular migration in the spirit of the proposal by Weil (2006) would be encouraged. The Blue Card would in effect act as an insurance policy for graduates from developing countries in case they would like to take the risk of going back home. They could always return to Europe for a second chance.

Borjas (2003) has pointed out, most of the empirical studies that fail to find a significant distributional impact of migration focus on the impact of immigration on wages in small geographic areas. But such an approach fails to control for the endogeneity of migration. Migrants tend to be attracted to locations that have the most vibrant local economies and therefore typically the most attractive wages. Hence, any negative wage impact of immigration might be hidden by above-average wages in areas that manage to attract the largest numbers of migrants


Dangers of an Ethnic Underclass

There are signs that certain immigrant communities in Europe are developing into an ethnic underclass. It is clear that much better education and improved economic opportunities for the children of low-skilled migrants already in Europe, need to be provided. Migration policies can usefully complement such integration measures by creating a high-skill bias among fresh immigrants. Low-skilled immigrants already in Europe are the closest labour market substitutes to new low-skill immigrants. Hence, by reducing the inflow of additional low-skilled immigrants, the economic prospects of existing low-skilled immigrant communities could probably be improved. For the source country, low-skilled emigration or “brawn drain” typically improves welfare as it improves both efficiency and redistribution. This positive impact of low-skilled emigration is
reinforced by remittances. Low-skilled emigrants will often help to support poor relatives in the source country with their higher earnings abroad.

By contrast, the welfare impact of high-skilled emigration or “brain drain” is ambiguous. The source country may suffer from an adverse efficiency and distributional impact as a result of the brain drain. There will be fiscal loss since high-skilled emigrants will no longer pay taxes in their home country. And just as high-skilled migrants help to uplift their ethnic communities abroad, they could have made notable contributions to public life had they stayed at home.


But a brain drain is not all bad for the source country. The option to emigrate may substantially increase the expected returns to education, thereby improving education incentive. Finally, if migrants return to their country of origin, and many of them do, the skills and savings they have acquired abroad become a powerful force of development. Therefore, moderate levels of brain drain may actually be beneficial for the source country as, for example, argued in Beine et al. (2003).


Economic migration can loosely be defined as any cross-border migration that occurs to take on a better paid job. If pay is broadly in line with productivity, a move to a better paid job thus increases global economic output. This is the fundamental efficiency argument in favour of migration.

But most people would prefer to stay at home if it wasn’t for the money. Therefore, why not upgrade productivity where the people currently are instead of having people chase more productive jobs abroad? International trade and cross-border movement of capital are helping to do just that. According to the classic factor price equalisation theorem of trade theory, wages might in principle be equalised internationally through the trade of goods alone! However, there are important reasons why migration pressures are likely to persist even under free trade, full mobility of capital, and flexible labour markets
domestically.

First, many poor countries suffer from an inferior “production function” because of poor institutions.

Despite recent development success stories, upgrading poor institutions is a slow process. In thmeantime, workers in many developing countries will continue to suffer from inferior wages. Migration can short-circuit this development problem by allowing workers move to locations with a better“production function” immediately.

Second, agglomeration effects are an important rationale for migration. For example, France and the UK are large countries with fairly uniform institutions, free trade and free movement of capital. Nevertheless, workers continue to migrate to extremely expensive and crowded places like London or Paris. The reason is that people become more productive by virtue of geographic concentration. By moving to a large agglomeration, often in a foreign country, they can also hope to greatly improve the match between their skill and their job, thus boosting their productivity.

The findings of the previous sections are summarised...high-skilled migration tends to improve the welfare of the host country while the welfare impact of migration on the source country is ambiguous. By contrast, low-skilled migration has an ambiguous welfare impact on the host country while generally improving welfare of the source country. Hence, there need not be a conflict of interest between source and host country but there may well be. This raises the question how could the positions of host and source country be reconciled, if indeed there were a conflict.

complete text: http://www.strategie.gouv.fr/revue/IMG/pdf/article_JakobVonWeizsacker2.pdf

In Switzerland the Black Sheep Lost

Photo: Switzerland - criticism of the People's party in 2003.



A previous article in the London Independent called Switzerland "the Heart of Darkness." The country who has gained fame for being neutral has fallen off the map of ethics. Hopefully the rest of Europe won't be so blind to follow.



-----
Racist' campaign pays off in Swiss poll
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
London Independent
Published: 22 October 2007

The right-wing Swiss People's Party won its best-ever showing in general elections yesterday after a virulent anti-foreigner campaign that was widely denounced as racist, but failed to obtain the landslide victory it had been hoping for.

The SVP, led by the controversial billionaire and Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher secured almost 29 per cent of the vote and an extra six seats in parliament, the first exit polls suggested last night.

Mr Blocher's campaign was dominated by the single issue of immigration. His party's election posters featured three white sheep standing on a red and white Swiss national flag kicking a black sheep out of the country. Alongside ran the slogan "more security!"

The notorious posters, which were part of the party's campaign to deport foreign criminal offenders and their families, were denounced as "openly racist" by the United Nations.

However the campaign appeared to have appealed to voters. Yesterday's elections saw the SVP consolidate its position as the largest party in the Swiss parliament, but its share of the vote increased by just two percentage points.


article: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3084302.ece
photo: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/capt.sge.qlk65.191003195834.photo01.default-384x256.jpg

France Part Two: It's not our mission to be police auxiliaries

France Races to Oust Illegal Immigrants
con't


In the Netherlands, the first act of the new parliament elected in November 2006 was to halt deportations set in motion by the previous government.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's new government declared an amnesty for up to 30,000 people. New asylum seekers and illegal immigrants still face a tough regime, kept in camps while their cases are handled. Even legal immigrants must pass language tests before coming and take citizenship classes in order to remain.

Meanwhile, resistance to France's crackdown has built among human rights groups, politicians of the opposition left, and even police. Injuries of foreigners during the past two months have also mobilized critics.

The 12-year-old Russian boy, who was fleeing with his illegal alien father in the northern town of Amiens, has been hospitalized with serious head injuries since early August. The North African man in the southern town of Roussillon suffered double fractures to his leg. The Chinese woman fell from an apartment in Paris on Thursday when police investigating a theft complaint turned up to carry out a check.

"Neighborhood groups are forming," said Pierre Willem of the UNSA police union. "Reactions are becoming more and more violent."

Some police officers worry they will get caught in the numbers hunt _ accused of racism for making arrests on the basis of skin color or other illegal criteria.

Even unions representing Air France employees are protesting, saying the flagship carrier's image is suffering because the government uses it to return illegal aliens, sometimes bound hand and foot, on flights occasionally marked by violent incidents.

"It's not our mission to be police auxiliaries," said Leon Cremieux, a national secretary of Sud Aerien, a small union representing employees of the aviation industry. Conditions during some expulsions are "contrary to human rights."

Socialist lawmaker Michele Delaunay, of Bordeaux, recently became a symbolic sponsor of a Kurd of Turkish nationality who had been ordered to leave France, stalling the expulsion process.

"It's a way to show the public that these problems of expulsion are, above all, human problems and not numbers," Delaunay said, adding that the young man speaks French, worked and paid taxes, making his case "particularly legitimate."

She nevertheless received an official warning that citizens who help illegal aliens stay in France risk a five-year prison term.

France Part One: I Want Numbers Says Sarkozy

Terror in France

France Races to Oust Illegal Immigrants
By ELAINE GANLEY
The Associated Press
Washington Post
Saturday, September 22, 2007; 7:11 AM


PARIS -- A Russian boy suffers head injuries after falling from a window while trying to elude police. A North African man slips from a window ledge and fractures his leg while fleeing officers. A Chinese woman lies in a coma after plunging from a window during a police check.

As France races to deport 25,000 illegal immigrants by the end of the year _ a quota set by President Nicolas Sarkozy _ tensions are mounting and the crackdown is taking a toll.

Critics say the hunt threatens values in a nation that prides itself on being a cradle of human rights and a land of asylum. Protesters have gathered by the dozens in Paris to protect illegal aliens as police move in.

But with three months left in the year, police have caught at least 11,800 immigrants, less than half the target, so Sarkozy has ordered officials to pick up the pace.

"I want numbers," Sarkozy reportedly told Brice Hortefeux, head of the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development, which Sarkozy set up after taking office in May. "This is a campaign commitment. The French expect (action) on this."

There are no solid estimates of the number of illegal aliens in France. The Immigration Ministry puts it at 200,000 to 400,000, many from former colonies in Africa. France has a population of some 63 million.

The president, who cultivated a tough-on-crime image while serving as Interior Minister, says France needs a new kind of immigrant _ one who is "selected, not endured."

His government is fast-tracking tighter immigration legislation. Parliament's lower house on Thursday approved a bill that would allow consular officers to request DNA samples from immigrants trying to join relatives in France. Even some Cabinet ministers dislike the measure, which critics say betrays France's humanitarian values.

The DNA tests would be voluntary and proponents say such testing, which would get a trial run until 2010, would speed visa processing and give immigrants a way to bolster their applications.

Immigration legislation under consideration also aims to ensure that immigrants joining family members here speak French and grasp French values _ to be proven with tests.

In a nationally televized interview Thursday, Sarkozy went further, saying he wants France to adopt immigration quotas by regions of the world and by occupation.

"I want us to be able to establish each year, after a debate in parliament, a quota with a ceiling for the number of foreigners we accept on our territory," he said.

European countries to the south, like Italy or Spain, face a greater challenge from illegal immigration than France _ but neither has set themselves targets for throwing aliens out...

Immigration Bashing in the U.K.

-----
Isolated, intimidated and undermined: the immigrants building a new life in the Fens
By Cahal Milmo
Published: 22 September 2007
London Independent

Shahid Rafique had not heard of "fozzie bashing" until the evening when a baying mob of 25 teenagers entered his internet café in Wisbech and tried to smash the computers before setting upon him and his Polish colleague. As kicks and punches rained down, the attackers shouted "f--- off home" and "Paki".

Mr Rafique was left bleeding on the doorstep of the business in the Cambridgeshire Fens that he spent his £25,000 life savings setting up. The gang's parting shot was to smash a window protected with wooden slats adorned with a painting of the Union Flag.

Mr Rafique, 32, a father-of-three, whose face is scarred from the assault seven months ago and whose voice still cracks with emotion when he talks about, said: "I put up the flag to show how proud I was to be in Britain, how happy I was to have set up my shop and to raise my children as British citizens.

"But this gang was like a pack of animals. Both boys and girls. I asked them if they had come to use the computers. But they just laughed and started shouting abuse and trying to destroy the equipment. They had no respect for their flag...

In the week that Cambridgeshire's chief constable, Julie Spence, made headlines by highlighting the strain put on her force by the arrival of 83,000 migrant workers in East Anglia since 2004 and suggesting that foreign nationals were responsible for a sharp rise in some criminal offences, Mr Rafique, who is half Portuguese and half Pakistani, is proof that the problem cuts both ways.

"Fozzie" or foreigner is a word that features often these days in Wisbech. Once a wealthy market town east of Peterborough awash with handsome Georgian architecture, it is now a hub for the thousands of East Europeans needed to work in the farms, orchards and processing plants that stretch across the surrounding Fens.

The influx over the last three years of Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Russian and Latvians, who join a long-established community of Portuguese workers, has proved a boon for local employers and landlords looking to rent out crowded accommodation to foreign tenants.

But it has also brought with it suspicion, intolerance and violence. Many immigrants who have set up home in the town say they are scared of going into pubs or walking in the town centre late at night.

There is growing evidence that the increase in Cambridgeshire's population – predicted to grow by 94,000 by 2016, with nearly two thirds of that figure coming from abroad – has created tensions in once placid rural and urban communities. Racially aggravated crime in Cambridgeshire rose by nine per cent last year to 351 incidents of violent assault and criminal damage...

The two victims were so frightened of recriminations that they refused to press charges but CCTV footage of the attack in the town's Market Square allowed police to track down the gang. Defence lawyers said the youths had been "sucked into a maelstrom of violence".

But the case hinted at a more sinister malaise in the town and further afield whereby beating up migrant workers has become a past time.

Magistrates insisted the attack was not racist. But the attack was linked to a police investigation to a website called Friday Night Fighters, on which youths from Wisbech and the nearby town of King's Lynn discuss attacking foreigners. The phrase "fozzie bashing" featured prominently on the website...

For complete article click title of this post

Jail for Rescuing Immigrants Off Coast of Sicily

Over 400 have died in the last year crossing the canal of Sicily. Even worse is that anyone helping them is being thrown in jail. France is right behind with Sarkozy wanting to deport over 20,000 migrants by Christmas.-----Switzerland is also in the game. Its a global disease and I'm not talking about migration, I'm talking about xenophobia.




-----
Tunisian fishermen face 15 years' jail in Italy for saving migrants from rough seas

By Peter Pophamin Rome
London Independent
Published: 20 September 2007

Seven Tunisian fishermen go on trial in Sicily today for the crime of rescuing 44 migrants from certain death in the sea. They are accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. If convicted, they face between one and 15 years in jail.

The men were arrested on 8 August after bringing the migrants ashore in Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost island. They were remanded in custody and remained in jail until 10 September, when five were released on bail and the two officers of the boat were put under house arrest.

On the morning of 7 August, Abdelkarim Bayoudh and his crew had dropped anchor on a shelf 30 miles south of the island of Lampedusa. They had just turned in for a few hours' sleep when they were woken by screams for help.

Coming out on deck they saw a rubber boat crammed with people wallowing in the rough sea, taking in water and on the point of sinking. Among them were two children and 11 women – two of them pregnant and one elderly and badly ill. In the crush to get aboard the fishing boat, two of the migrants went in the water. Two of the Tunisian crew dived in and rescued them.

Captain Bayoudh then headed for the nearest harbour. Their home port of Monastir was 90 miles away, Lampedusa only 30 miles. The best destination was obvious. Yet on arrival in Lampedusa, the seven Tunisians were arrested and thrown in jail. Experts say the charge of aiding illegal immigration is absurd...


For complete article click title to this post

photo: UNHCR. http://www.eumap.org/journal/features/2004/migration/pt2/child