Prepared by Patrick Weil, CNRS, Paris
Discussion paper prepared for the UK Presidency, October 2005
Introduction
European Immigration Policy is at a crossroads. Obviously, in the domains related to migration control and asylum where convergence existed prior to the Amsterdam treaty (with the Schengen agreement and the Geneva Convention), convergence is reinforcing itself, directive after directive.(1)
Harmonisation is complete for visa policy between the countries of the Schengen zone. It has achieved a great deal for all the Member States of the European Union in the domain of asylum. The most recent project related to the repatriation of illegal immigrants is a sign that in the domain of control, the Member States of the EU have a common framework, common interests and objectives, and are therefore making continuous progress towards harmonisation.
This is not the case in the domain related to the admission of legal immigrants through family ties, but also - and particularly so - in that of labour market demands. In the field of family reunion, harmonisation is minimal: the European directive of 22nd September 2003 is in many ways the formalisation of the pre-existing gap between national policies. In the domain of labour migration, the adoption of a directive on the admission of non-EU nationals working in the EU has been postponed. European States find themselves either in competition with one another (to attract the highest skilled) or in the position of producing potentially undesirable side effects (for example, in the case of the legalisation of all illegal immigrants, or on the contrary, in the case of refusal to bring in any legalisation at all). Legal immigration remains subject to unanimity and Member States retain a considerable margin of manoeuvre to adopt their policies according to diverging necessities.(2)
These divergences can be explained by the permanence of numerous differential factors including:
a) The respective demographic situations of each of the countries of the Union are very different. A report published in 2000 by the Population Division of the United Nations clearly demonstrated that immigration can be a realistic solution to combat the decrease of the total population or the active population of developed countries. But the report also shows that in regard to this second consideration, European countries occupy vastly different situations; to maintain their total population, Italy or Germany need a level of immigration far more numerous than in the past; whereas France or the United Kingdom need less. It is to maintain - for the stability of their retirement systems - an active population at the same level that countries would need to increase their net immigration flow. But here again, a country such as France, where the birth rate is still relatively high and immigration quite a long-established phenomenon, is in a very different situation to that of its European partners: between 2000 and 2050, the net immigration needed to maintain the active population at its current level in France would be 5.459 million (110,000 people per annum), 25.2 million in Germany (500,000 per annum) and 19.6 million in Italy (a little less than 400,000 per annum).(3)
b) European states are also in different situations with regard to the migratory cycle. If all the 15 ‘old’ Member States of the Union are from now on countries of immigration, the oldest countries of immigration (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium or the Netherlands) - having had immigration of workers for a longer time now have a majority of legal migrants joining their labour market (more often than not unqualified) indirectly through family reunion.(4) In the more recent countries of immigration (Spain, Italy, Portugal or Greece), flows are still principally composed of direct labour migration.
c) The techniques and regulations linked to the management of immigration can equally vary. We find for example significant procedural differences in admission to the labour market (systems of quotas or individual criteria). It is interesting to note that those EU countries who have decided to fix an annual quota of admissions for legal migrants are the same ones who have witnessed the largest inflow of illegal immigrants.
The challenge here is to coordinate action between Member States whose needs for legal migration will remain divergent for a long period of time. In the future, how can we allow Italy, Germany and Spain to attract three or four times more immigrants than France or the UK without undesirable side effects potentially coming from all sides?
Thus, I am convinced that with a frank and open exchange of experience, and an assessment of different methods and strategies, we can anticipate the adoption of a common framework in the following areas: admission (individual versus quota, opening or closing of the market to new Members States’ citizens); renewal of permits; treatment of foreign students; and the treatment of long term illegal migrants.
A new impetus in favour of a more common legal immigration policy is necessary because legal admission and illegal migration can be linked: some national legal admission systems favour illegal migration while others deter it.
In the medium term, the impact of different legal admission systems on illegal migration should be assessed. The absence of a common and efficient statistical framework prevents any comparison based on credible data, and therefore its adoption should be a priority. Last, but not least, to avoid collective, massive and continual legalisation of long term illegal migrants, a mechanism of continued and individual legalisation (as opposed to ‘exceptional’ and ‘collective) that exists already in some member states, should be studied.
Yet, without delay, some short term proposals should also be considered:
a) Opening our borders to the new European citizens
Since May 2004, the citizens of the 10 new Member States of the European Union have been subject to ‘transitional arrangements’ with regard to the free movement of workers across the majority of the 15 ‘old’ Member States.
The UK, Ireland and Sweden are the only countries that have opened their labour markets to the new citizens of Europe. Some other Member States have created a quota for EU-8 citizens (Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal). In the 8 other Members States, the restrictions apply to eight of the ten new Member States (Cyprus and Malta are exempted) and will last from two (2006) to seven years (2011).
Data collected especially in Britain, Ireland and Sweden, show that labour flows from the new Member States have been both manageable and beneficial. In Sweden, workers arriving from the EU-8 states increased the active population by just 0.07% between May and December 2004. In Italy the quota of 79 000 in 2005 set for the new European citizens has not been fulfilled: Italy has only attracted 48 000 immigrants.
The countries who continue to close their labour markets find themselves in a counter-productive situation; with new European citizens immigrating anyway and working illegally.
In the EU states that have opened their labour market, the new European citizens fill the jobs that are fulfilled in the rest of Europe by illegal migrants, either from the new Member States or nonEU countries.
Proposal:
Rapidly lifting the transitional periods currently placed on citizens from the new Member States will contribute to the reduction of the number of illegal workers coming from non-Member States and will therefore deter illegal migration from outside the EU. Restrictions to the movement of workers from the new Member States should be removed immediately under certain criteria (i.e. following checks on the affects to levels of salary, etc.). At the very least, all restrictions on new European citizens with a university degree should be removed.
b) Brain Drain vs. Brain Circulation
Within the EU, a space of free circulation, there is no risk of brain drain thanks to the possibility of brain and labour circulation. The risk exists when North-South migration of skilled workers is at stake.
In some Members States, strong reservations with regard to skilled migration exist. It has sometimes racist or corporatist roots: the wish to reserve the most valuable professional positions in society for the natives. It can be based on ‘third-worldism’: in the name of development or co-development, they encourage foreign graduates to return to their country of origin.
This is both incoherent and absurd. African, Asian, South American, or other non-EU citizens should from the moment they receive a degree from a European university, enter the world market of graduates. If they do not want to return home, they will not do so. And if Europe refuses them residency, they will receive a job offer from the United States, Japan, Canada, or Australia and will be ‘lost’ both for their country of origin and for the country where they received their training.
Europe should therefore have its own third way policy on qualified foreign workers: neither closing the door to the potential they offer nor falling into the North American trap: the brain drain, (i.e. attracting skilled immigrants who never return home). Rather Europe should favour brain and labour circulation. Often, foreign graduates seek employment on the European labour market because they wish to gain the resources or the professional experience necessary to launch themselves into a career in their home country. They should not be prevented from choosing this path, on the contrary. If they later balk at the idea of going home, it is often because they fear losing the cultural, scientific, or entrepreneurial environment necessary to maintain or enhance their skills base. It is essential, therefore, to accompany the liberalisation of the recruitment of the most highly qualified, with a better ‘offer’ that is both closer to the wishes of these high skilled workers and more respectful - case permitting - of their home countries’ interests. It is necessary to facilitate voluntary ‘recirculation’ between their country of origin and their country of training. Thus through the development of intellectual exchanges and a flow of business, they will become the private agents of co-development.
Proposal:
Foreign graduate students from European universities could receive the benefit of a permanent visa . It would permit them to return and recirculate from their country of origin without fear that any exit would be final.
Proposal:
When an EU university or hospital recruits foreign professors or doctors, they should be offered the possibility of a joint recruitment. They would work alternatively in a EU institution and an African or Asian one, keeping their salary and their European job. Their salary in the sending country could be funded by the EU as a concrete and pragmatic action in favour of development.
Conclusion
The facilitation of ‘circulation’ and ‘recirculation’, according to a regime adapted to suit each category of migrants - for highly skilled workers, but also for seasonal workers - will be one of the new tasks for immigration policy in the 21st century. Through this approach, the EU could better satisfy the wishes of the migrant, the need for cooperation with the exporter states in the management of immigration, and of economic development. This will demand the most radical innovations in immigration administration. The inert state of the 19th century liked stable populations and quotas. It did not mind whether an immigrant was either here or elsewhere, provided that the situation was durable and controlled. The 21st century state must learn how to regulate immigration and seek not only to ‘control’ it with rigid and inflexible instruments. We must become increasingly comfortable with managing the rights and the status of nationals abroad, and of foreigners within our own territory.
Biography
Patrick Weil is a senior research fellow at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). He is the author of an influential report on immigration and nationality policies reform (1997) and has been a member of the Commission on the implementation of the principle of secularism in Republic (July-December 2003).
Footnotes
(1) This is an abbreviated version of a contribution commissioned by Policy Network for a larger project on the European Social Model.
(2) See: European Commission, Green Paper on a Community Approach to the Management of Economic Migration, COM (2004) 811 Final, 11 January 2005.
(3) United Nations, Population Division (2000), ‘Replacement Migration: is it a solution to declining and ageing populations?’ New York, (ESA/P/WP.160).
(4) Jean Francois Leger distinguishes thus between direct entries onto the labour market and the more important indirect entries, of political refugees, and the beneficiaries of family reunion or the partners of citizens or of permanent foreign residents who have - in the majority of the European Union - the right to work immediately after the delivery of their permit. Therefore all permanent residence permits provide access to the labour market. J-F Leger, ‘Les entrees d’entrangers sur le marche de l’emploi de 1990 a 2001‘, Revue europeene des migrations internationales, col. 20, no 1, 2004, pp. 7-20.
(5) Technically their visa could be refused by EU consulate except under written justifications.
(6) Seasonal workers could get the benefit of multi-annual permits: they could get the guarantee to get a permit the nest 3, 5 or 10 following years, if at the end of their season, each year, they return to their country of origin.
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