The European Parliament last week called for a boost in skilled legal migration to tackle Europe’s demographic crisis and lagging economic competitiveness on the global market. MEPs voted on September 27 in Strasbourg in favour of two reports aimed at encouraging legal migration and cracking down on illegal immigration, as well as a plan for a European work permit for skilled workers - the blue card. Images in the media of Africans grasping onto the side of dilapidated boats fighting for their lives off the Mediterranean coast continue to astound onlookers; while, at the same time, another crisis is brewing - Europe’s growing, unfilled demand for skilled and low-skilled workers.
An inflow of some 20 million workers in the next few decades will be necessary to keep Europe’s economy afloat. The region is struggling with a decreasing birth rate, ageing population and brain drain.
Now is the first time that European lawmakers are seriously looking at the link between legal and illegal flows of migrants onto their territory. “Migration will not go away. It is driven by the heady cocktail of despair and hope. Yet it has the capacity, if properly managed, to enrich and energise Europe,” UK MEP Graham Watson said in the Plenary debate on September 26.
Europe needs to fill its labour gap
Europe also needs to become more competitive. However, the current trend allows high-paying labour markets to attract the world’s topskilled workers, while Europe’s black market continues to recruit illegal immigrants. “The challenge is to attract the workers needed to fill specific gaps,” European Commission Vice President Franco Frattini said. Eighty-five percent of unskilled workers go to the EU and five percent to the US, while 55 percent of skilled workers go to the US and only five percent to the EU, he explained.
“One effective way of dealing with illegal migration is to open the channels of legal migration,” Italian MEP Lilli Gruber said while presenting the parliament with her own initiative report on legal migration. A dual-track plan could control the flow of migrants: attracting workers in demand by offering a legal route to Europe through employment recruitment, while repelling illegal immigrants by eradicating the attraction of black market employment with a “zero tolerance” policy, EU officials said.
An inflow of skilled workers would stimulate Europe’s economy, but Gruber pointed out that care must be taken “not to drain away the reservoir of skills that countries need, without offering anything in exchange.” More than 18 million non- EU nationals legally reside in Europe, while some nine million Europeans reside in a member state other than their own, Gruber’s report states, according to Eurostat figures. “…There’s no question that a real demand exists for specific skills, varying from one country to another, which can’t be met inside the EU. In those cases, it’s fair to open our doors,” she said.
Work permit to attract skilled labour
Supporters said the blue card does just this. It is essentially a work permit, much like the US green card, but instead only allows skilled workers to reside and work in the EU for a renewable period of two years, after which they could move on and work in another member state. According to one source in the Parliament, the blue card would have an expiry date of five years, after which card holders would be forced to return to their country of origin - third country. This would encourage circular migration and thus inhibit brain drain from the third country.
The concept will be presented by the Commission on October 23. “An active European policy for the development of third countries and the conclusion of partnership and migrant flow control agreements will benefit both the demographic problem of Europe and the future prosperity of third countries,” Greek MEP Marie Panayotopoulos- Cassiotou said. The Commission is slated to propose four other directives on the admission conditions and procedures for certain migrants, including seasonal workers and paid trainees. Strategies include implementing a single work and resident permit as one document to ease complications of workers within Europe.
A plan will be introduced soon setting out common rights for legally-employed migrants who still do not have long-term residency, as well as a plan in 2009 to facilitate crossborder transfers of employees within multinational companies. Cooperation between the EU and third countries would include recruiting workers through a job placement database, facilitating legal channels of entry through the creation of information centres in the third countries and creating readmission agreements for returnees or illegal immigrants. Frattini pointed out that a centre has already opened in Mali’s capital, Bamako.
European leaders have a rigorous task ahead of them to grapple with legal migration. According to data from a pilot version in 2004 of the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), legal migrants “found it difficult or impossible to work, to have their qualifications recognised, or to access training,” among other problems ranging from the inability to reunite with family members, difficulty in receiving long-term residency papers and discrimination. The group plans to launch a detailed index this October.
Legal migration to curb black markets
Europe has more than 10 million illegal immigrants. Spanish MEP Javier Moreno Sanchez presented the second report aimed at combating this inflow through strategies such as stronger cooperation with third countries and enhanced funding and support for Frontex - Europe’s poorly-funded external border force, as well as cooperation between Europol and Europe’s judicial and police. Sanchez said he supports “measures that favour legal channels of immigration to the EU, fundamental to curb clandestine immigration and to fight against networks of human trafficking.”
In the next few months, Parliament is due to adopt a directive proposal setting out common rules for the return of illegal immigrants and a second to impose sanctions on employers of illegal immigrants. The black market, not onetime regularisations, is to blame for attracting illegal immigrants to the EU, Sanchez told New Europe. Mafia bosses are to blame, not the illegal immigrants. “You have to remember they’re not criminals,” Sanchez told a press conference. “It’s not an easy issue” … “you have to attack not these people, (but) the Mafias who are dealing with all this black market.
And that’s the difficult one because the markets are very powerful,” he told New Europe. Sanchez explained that it is up to the member states to both inspect the workplace and follow through in sanctioning employers when caught. “If you reduce the black market, you will reduce the illegal immigration,” he said. Frattini said, “We have to look at immigration as an enrichment and as an inescapable phenomenon of today’s world, not as a threat.”
Migration flows will continue due to economic discrepancies and global threats such as global change. French MEP Jean Marie Cavada said that no one country can manage immigration flows on its own. “At last, we can deal with legal and illegal immigration together - constituting the two sides of a Common Immigration Policy”
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