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.
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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

Face scans at airports in the E.U.?

Detail of photo: Image Source/Getty

what movie would this remind you of?
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Face scans for air passengers to begin in UK this summer

Officials say automatic screening more accurate than checks by humans

* Owen Bowcott
* The Guardian - London,
* Friday April 25 2008

Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.

From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.

Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

They may be redirected into conventional passport queues, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks.

Ministers are eager to set up trials in time for the summer holiday rush, but have yet to decide how many airports will take part. If successful, the technology will be extended to all UK airports.

The automated clearance gates introduce the new technology to the UK mass market for the first time and may transform the public's experience of airports.

Existing biometric, fast-track travel schemes - iris and miSense - operate at several UK airports, but are aimed at business travellers who enroll in advance.

The rejection rate in trials of iris recognition, by means of the unique images of each traveller's eye, is 3% to 5%, although some were passengers who were not enrolled but jumped into the queue.

The trials emerged at a conference in London this week of the international biometrics industry, top civil servants in border control, and police technology experts. Gary Murphy, head of operational design and development for the UK Border Agency, told one session: "We think a machine can do a better job [than manned passport inspections]. What will the public reaction be? Will they use it? We need to test and see how people react and how they deal with rejection. We hope to get the trial up and running by the summer.

Some conference participants feared passengers would only be fast-tracked to the next bottleneck in overcrowded airports. Automated gates are intended to help the government's progress to establishing a comprehensive advance passenger information (API) security system that will eventually enable flight details and identities of all passengers to be checked against a security watch list.

Phil Booth of the No2Id Campaign said: "Someone is extremely optimistic. The technology is just not there. The last time I spoke to anyone in the facial recognition field they said the best systems were only operating at about a 40% success rate in a real time situation. I am flabbergasted they consider doing this at a time when there are so many measures making it difficult for passengers."

Gus Hosein, a specialist at the London School of Economics in the interplay between technology and society, said: "It's a laughable technology. US police at the SuperBowl had to turn it off within three days because it was throwing up so many false positives. The computer couldn't even recognise gender. It's not that it could wrongly match someone as a terrorist, but that it won't match them with their image. A human can make assumptions, a computer can't."

Project Semaphore, the first stage in the government's e-borders programme, monitors 30m passenger movements a year through the UK. By December 2009, API will track 60% of all passengers and crew movements. The Home Office aim is that by December 2010 the system will be monitoring 95%. Total coverage is not expected to be achieved until 2014 after similar checks have been introduced for travel on "small yachts and private flights".

So far around 8m to 10m UK biometric passports, containing a computer chip holding the carrier's facial details, have been issued since they were introduced in 2006. The last non-biometric passports will cease to be valid after 2016.

Home Office minister Liam Byrne said: "Britain's border security is now among the toughest in the world and tougher checks do take time, but we don't want long waits. So the UK Border Agency will soon be testing new automatic gates for British and European Economic Area [EEA] citizens. We will test them this year and if they work put them at all key ports [and airports]."

The EEA includes all EU states as well as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland.

*
This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday April 25 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 01:00 on April 25 2008.



* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 20

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

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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

More on the EU's Blue Card

TECHWEB
October 25, 2007 Thursday 3:10 PM GMT
Could Europe's New 'Blue Card' Cause Global Tech Talent To Shun U.S.?


The European Union hopes that its proposed blue-card program will provide a more attractive alternative to the U.S. green-card program, which critics say is plagued by backlogs, cumbersome processes, and insufficient quotas.


While the United States continues to argue about whether to raise the H-1B visa cap and reform green-card processes to allow more foreign tech workers into the country, the European Union wants to make it much easier for highly skilled workers from abroad to land jobs in the EU's 27 member countries.

The EU, which is predicting a severe workforce crisis over the next several decades as its Baby Boomer generation retires, aims to attract 20 million workers from the outside in the years to come.

The EU hopes that a new proposed "blue card" will help fill that void, providing a more attractive alternative to the U.S. green-card program, which critics say is plagued by backlogs, cumbersome processes, and insufficient quotas.

The blue card would provide educated immigrants, including tech professionals, with a two-year, renewable permit to work and reside in an EU member nation. Because the EU aims for a worker's blue-card application process to take less than three months, the visa would provide a fast track for foreign-born individuals to land jobs in EU member countries.

By contrast, the U.S. green-card process can take anywhere from five to 10 years for an individual to gain permanent residency. And the 85,000 annual quota on H-1B visas for temporary foreign tech workers has been running out quickly for the last few years, forcing many prospective workers to take jobs elsewhere.

In addition to being an alternative to the U.S. green card, the blue-card program will also provide an option to foreign-born individuals who might have considered taking jobs in Canada or Australia, two other favorite destinations for the highly-skilled international workforce.

The EU's unveiling of the blue-card program this week comes at the same time that the U.S. Senate approved a spending bill amendment that could raise employers' H-1B visa fees to $5,000 per worker from $1,500. The additional fees will be used to fund new scholarship programs for U.S. students pursuing technology, math, and science-related degrees.

Compete America, a coalition of technology companies that has been lobbying Congress for several years to raise the H-1B visa cap and make green-card reforms, blasted the fee hikes and expressed worry about the blue card's potential impact on the U.S. tech workforce."Europe has sent a message. They're aggressively pursuing the professional talent they need to compete on the global stage," said Robert Hoffman, VP for government and public affairs at Oracle and co-chair of Compete America, in a statement.

"The Senate has unfortunately also sent a message, and it doesn't bode well for the U.S. economy," Hoffman said.

European Union's Blue Card for Technology Workers

EU 'Blue Card' to target skilled
BBC World News
October 23, 2007

The European Commission has unveiled a Blue Card for skilled immigrants, based on the US Green Card.
The plan would allow suitably qualified people and their families to live and work within the European Union.

The EU says it needs 20m skilled workers over the next two decades, and is very short of expertise in engineering and computer technology.

The scheme, which is more restrictive than the US Green Card, would need the approval of all 27 EU member states.

Correspondents say another aim of the plan is to reverse a current trend under which skilled migrants, mostly from Asia and Africa, emigrate to the US to find work.

'Centralisation too far'

The BBC's Mark Mardell in Brussels says the proposal is controversial and some countries are sure to oppose it.

Critics also fear that Europe's attempt to take the best and leave the rest will only encourage a brain-drain from poorer nations.

The UK, Ireland and Denmark could opt out, but the other EU members will have to take part.



UK ministers say they are studying it, but our correspondent says they are not keen on the card, preferring to develop an Australian-style points system.

Unveiled at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday afternoon, the Blue Card would enable holders and their families to live, work and travel within the EU.

To be eligible, new immigrants would need to show a recognised diploma and have at least three years professional experience.

They would also need the offer of a job, for a minimum one-year contract, which could not be filled by an EU citizen.

European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said: "This is not an 'open doors' policy."

"If a given member-state needs engineers or doctors, it has to decide how many, and then I will provide a state with a common procedure," he added.

But some politicians in the Netherlands and Germany are hostile and the Austrian government has condemned the plan as "a centralisation too far".

Across Europe there is a real tension between politicians, who know voters are worried about immigration, and businesses demanding graduates from India and China, our correspondent says.




BLUE CARD V GREEN CARD


Blue Card

Does not give permanent residency
Valid up to two years, renewable
Allows holders and families to live, work and travel in EU
Applicant must have one-year EU job contract with salary of three times minimum wage
Permanent residency automatic after five years

Green Card

Gives holder permanent residency
Valid for 10 years, renewable
Allows holder to live, work and travel in the US
Five channels to seek a card: employment, family links, a lottery, investment, or resident since before 1972
Holders can become US citizens after five years



http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7057575.stm

SF Chronicle on Lost DREAM ACT Vote

The San Francisco Chronicle is saying that the new blue card in the European Union will welcome DREAM ACT graduates. However a BBC article states the graduates need 3 years professional experience, which is impossible to obtain if the DREAMERS are in the U.S.


'[U.S.] Technology lobbyists pointed with alarm at the decision this week by the European Union to offer legal status to educated immigrants in information technology and other skilled fields with a new blue card explicitly designed to divert such workers to Europe from the United States.

"The EU is saying, 'We're coming for your students. We know the U.S. produces the best math and science students coming out of college. And we're going to come get them,' " said Robert Hoffman, vice president for government and public affairs at Oracle, the Redwood Shores software giant.'

Otherwise the SFC tells just about the same story as all the other papers on the loss of the DREAM ACT


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San Francisco Chronicle
October 25, 2007

(10-25) 04:00 PDT Washington- -- The Senate killed help Wednesday for the single most sympathetic group of illegal immigrants - those who were brought to the country as children and now wish to go to college or join the military - and seemed to dash the hopes of Silicon Valley technology companies and California farmers for more immigrant workers they say they desperately need.

The DREAM Act, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would have provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children, live here more than five consecutive years and complete two years of college or military service. The bill, which goes by its acronym and is named the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, received a 52-44 majority, but that was far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

The vote split both parties: It was backed by 12 Republicans, but opposed by eight Democrats. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein voted for the bill; Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a Democrat, was touring the fire zone in California and missed the vote.

The legislation was the first major attempt since a broad immigration bill crashed in the Senate last June to split off elements that have significant support - without granting legal status to all of the estimated 12 million people living in the country illegally.

The University of California had pushed hard for the bill, with a plea from UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and news conferences with UC students caught in immigration limbo.
Anti-illegal immigration activists mobilized too, deriding the legislation as the nightmare act and stealth amnesty and warning that the measure would trigger a chain migration of sponsored relatives. Supporters vigorously denied those charges.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., went so far as to call for federal agents to round up illegal college students who lobbied for the bill.

Instead of gaining ground, the DREAM Act fractured the unlikely coalition of business and immigrant rights groups that had united earlier this year behind broader immigration overhaul legislation.

Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, conceded that with an election next year and anti-immigrant sentiment increasing, further efforts at immigration reform are probably doomed. That would include the so-called AgJobs bill to provide temporary permits for farmworkers that Feinstein had hoped to push through this year.

It also hampers recent efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to respond to a rising clamor from farms, resorts, high-tech companies, nursing homes and dozens of other industries that say they need workers, and immigrant rights groups who say illegal immigrants are being targeted by federal agents and local and state governments.

The moderate New Democrat Coalition, chaired by Rep. Ellen Tauscher of Walnut Creek, wrote Pelosi on Monday urging action on visas for scientists, mathematicians and engineers, warning that U.S. competitiveness is at stake. But objections arose from other Democrats wanting relief for illegal immigrants.

At the same time, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., one of Pelosi's top political lieutenants, was quoted as saying immigration "has emerged as the third rail of American politics, and anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people."
Technology lobbyists pointed with alarm at the decision this week by the European Union to offer legal status to educated immigrants in information technology and other skilled fields with a new blue card explicitly designed to divert such workers to Europe from the United States.

"The EU is saying, 'We're coming for your students. We know the U.S. produces the best math and science students coming out of college. And we're going to come get them,' " said Robert Hoffman, vice president for government and public affairs at Oracle, the Redwood Shores software giant.

Behind the scenes, business and immigrant rights groups blamed each other for the meltdown - and are refusing to back each other's legislation if they can't attach their own.

Durbin made an impassioned plea for young illegal immigrants who were raised in this country and know no other home yet cannot get permission to work or go to college. He said there is sentiment among Democrats that business groups should not come asking for more workers if they refuse to support such strivers who are already here.

"If we're going to tell these children to leave, that we don't need them, we don't need their talent, we don't need their education, how can you make an argument that we need to bring in more foreign talent to America?" Durbin said.
Technology lobbyists said they have never opposed the DREAM Act and accused Durbin of trying to kill expanded immigration benefits for high skilled legal immigrants at every turn.

"We've always believed we have anywhere from 80 to 90 votes in the U.S. Senate for high skilled immigration," and an equally overwhelming majority in the House, said Ralph Hellman, a top lobbyist with the Information Technology Industry Council. Hellman drew a sharp distinction between expansion of visas for legal immigrants, such as skilled workers on H-1B visas, and illegal immigrants.

"People have always used our issue in legal immigration as sweeteners to get their issue across the finish line. ...We have been a political football for three years on immigration, and we're tired of it," Hellman said. "Given what has happened in the EU, our competitors are going to lap us."

H-1B temporary visas for skilled workers are now running out the first day they are issued, and tech companies say they need them to attract foreign students who have earned math, science and engineering degrees from U.S. universities. Skilled H-1B workers who wish to remain in the United States also face a growing backlog for green cards that grant permanent resident status.

California farmers say the crackdown on the border with Mexico is preventing workers from coming north, and they face the prospect of rotting crops or moving their operations to Mexico.

Doris Meissner, chief of the federal immigration service under President Bill Clinton, who is now at the Migration Policy Institute, said the failure of the DREAM Act "certainly says the piecemeal approach is failing. Whether it means nothing will happen on something like H-1Bs, I don't know. H-1B has a very well organized lobby and it deals with changes in the legal immigration system. The DREAM Act and AgJobs and other things that fall into the realm of being branded amnesty are the ones that really just don't have any legs right now."

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.