May 27, 2004
Just plain dumb
EU immigration policy, that is.
Eastern Europe is full of smart, ambitious, hard-working young people who would jump at the chance to move to Germany or France or Britain. In the last three years, we've met engineers, doctors, nurses, software designers, journalists, economists, entrepreneurs of every sort imaginable.
Most of these people are under 35. Over that age, people are usually too settled to seriously consider emigrating (though there are exceptions). Below it, though... well, the younger an educated person is, in this part of the world, the more likely it is that they're at least thinking about leaving. And the converse seems to be true, too: the more educated a young person is, the stronger the pull of the West.
(This makes a lot of sense if you think about it. If you're young but unskilled... well, being a bricklayer in Spain or Germany is not that much better than being a bricklayer in Serbia or Romania. A software engineer in the West, on the other hand, can make quite a lot more money. Even adjusting for the higher cost of living, it's a very rational decision.)
Serbia and Romania are not unusual. There are thousands and thousands of people like this, all over Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, most of the EU countries are facing a looming demographic crisis. In the next couple of decades, they're not going to have enough people of working age to support the ever-growing ranks of the nonworking elderly. From Italy to Belgium, western Europe desperately needs more hard-working young people.
And now all these new countries -- full of smart, ambitious young people who would very much like to move West -- have just joined the EU. Hungarian electricians, Polish computer programmers, Slovakian mechanical engineers, Latvian health care workers: they're all available now for recruitment to the west.
So, of course, the EU member's response to this is....
...to slam the door shut. Of the 15 old EU member states, every one but Ireland chose to place sharp restrictions on the free movement of people from the 10 new members. The Germans, the Italians, the Swedes and Dutch and French: they're all closing their doors. And in most cases, it looks like they plan to keep them closed for the maximum time allowable -- seven years. So they're not going to take advantage of this opportunity until 2011.
Now, there are some reasons for this. In roughly decreasing order of respectability, they are:
1) High unemployment in most EU countries. (Why would we want thousands of Lithuanians and Poles coming here, when we don't have enough jobs for our own people?)
2) Fear that the newcomers will go on welfare or otherwise place a burden on the state.
3) Fear that the immigrants will not integrate well. (We already have enough of a problem with the Turks/West Indians/Pakistanis/'beurres'. Why should we bring in a bunch of Slavs too?) This includes fear that the immigrants will bring bad habits or undesirable connections from their home countries.
4) Confusion of the issues; most commonly, a lumping together of legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees/asylum seekers.
5) Gypsies. I hate to say it, but there it is. It's hard to avoid the impression that "Eas
Posted by douglas at May 27, 2004 08:41 AMYour explanation is not at all over-simplified...you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I think (although I hate these restrictions on movement, it makes the Eastern European EU countries feel like they're "second best") that this blockage will help countries who could suffer from a brain drain. So that Poland does retain its doctors and the Czech Republic keeps their computer programmer and Estonia doesn't loose too many nurses.
But it does smack of veiled racism on the part of the "established" EU.
Posted by: Kinuk at May 28, 2004 10:04 AMYep.
It's the same over and over again: The old members don't know anything or not enough about the new.
It hurts more when you want to do something good about the place you live in AND you get the door.
E.g. Romanian emigrant living in France for years with a temporary work permit, tries to start up a business, gets his resident visa denied. Hilarity ensues NOT.
"...to slam the door shut. Of the 15 old EU member states, every one but Ireland chose to place sharp restrictions on the free movement of people from the 10 new members. The Germans, the Italians, the Swedes and Dutch and French: they're all closing their doors."
Incorrect. Sweden has no restrictions.
Posted by: David Weman at May 29, 2004 01:52 PMDavid, it looks like you are correct.
In my defense, this seems to have been a last-minute change of heart. Apparently Goran Persson's Social-Democrat government decided in February to raise restrictions. But at the last possible moment -- April 29, two days before enlargement -- Parliament took a vote, and enough Social Democrats voted with the opposition to knock the Government's bill down.
So, Sweden and Ireland. And apparently Britain's restriction level is pretty low -- basically you have to apply for a permit, which will be given unless there's some good reason not to.
Ironically, Ireland is probably the country that *least* needs immigration from the East -- they're already attracting a lot of immigrants from members of the original 15. But that's another story...
Doug M.
Didn't the then-EC do this to Spain and Portugal back in 1986?
As petty and silly as this is, I suspect that it may serve as a blessing in disguise by discouraging an emigration which would hit these countries badly, seeing as how they're going through similar demographic trends as the EU-15. (Not that I'm necessarily convinced that there would be much emigration regardless, given the propensity of many central Europeans to not migrate within their own countries.)
Anti-Gypsy sentiment seems to be fairly common throughout the EU, in the EU-15 and in the acceding states. What do you think is realistically going to happen?
Posted by: Randy McDonald at May 30, 2004 05:47 AMRandy, several good points here.
1) Yes, the EU did do this to Spain and Portugal. The initial restriction was for seven years, but it was dropped partially after three and completely after five, apparently because those two countries had strong growth and weren't producing much emigration (and almost no "problem" emigrants).
However, keep in mind that the Iberian countries had pcGDPs around 50%-60% of the EU average. For the 10 new members, it's more like 35% of the EU average. Also, there are about twice as many people in the "EU 10" as there were in Iberia.
2) Blessing in disguise -- on one hand, I agree. On the other, this seems a rather cynical argument; it justifies the prohibition of migration on the pretext of knowing best under what circumstances an individual should decide to migrate or stay home. And it makes a bit of a mockery of "free movement of peoples".
(Consider how you'd feel if you weren't allowed to work legally in Ontario; and so were compelled to go back to Prince Edewar Island next week, to take your chences in the job market there.)
3) I don't think the absence of internal migration tells us much about the propensity of Eastern Europeans to head west. There probably is some correlation, but I suspect it's weak. (Is there much internal migration in PEI?)
4) What's going to happen with anti-Gypsy sentiment? I have no idea. But I'm not optimistic. If the lot of Eastern European Roma is getting better, I'm not seeing it.
Note that the Roma tend to have higher birthrates than the surrounding populations. (We could see this clearly in both Serbia and Romania.) What this means in the long run... really, I don't know.
Doug M.
However, keep in mind that the Iberian countries had pcGDPs around 50%-60% of the EU average. For the 10 new members, it's more like 35% of the EU average. Also, there are about twice as many people in the "EU 10" as there were in Iberia.
Which is true, but four of the five Visegrad states (Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic) have pcGDPs at that same level, and if you believe the Eurostat data, are on the verge of becoming societies of immigration themselves. (Hey, if Greece is 10% immigrants ...) Similar things with Poland, though that country's a bit behind--it's not yet experiencing net immigration, regardless of the numbers of Ukrainians and Armenians and Vietnamese coming in. I've no idea about the Baltic States, frankly, though Helsingin Sanomat (sp?) has suggested that a quarter-million Finns might move into Estonia in the next generation (Finnic environment, lower taxes).
Certainly there are questions of scale, but I suspect that scale is being irregularly applied.
2) Blessing in disguise -- on one hand, I agree. On the other, this seems a rather cynical argument; it justifies the prohibition of migration on the pretext of knowing best under what circumstances an individual should decide to migrate or stay home. And it makes a bit of a mockery of "free movement of peoples".
Well, yes. No disagreement here.
(Consider how you'd feel if you weren't allowed to work legally in Ontario; and so were compelled to go back to Prince Edewar Island next week, to take your chences in the job market there.)
Yes, I'd become an illegal. (Yet another reason why I am thankful that PEI persisted in its sham autonomy from Canada for only six years after Confederation.) I'm somewhat familiar, in an academic perspsective, with the situation of illegal migrants working in shadow economies, so I'd be at least that well prepared.
3) I don't think the absence of internal migration tells us much about the propensity of Eastern Europeans to head west. There probably is some correlation, but I suspect it's weak. (Is there much internal migration in PEI?)
A fair bit. The trend over the past half-century has been for population to concentrate in central PEI (roughly speaking, a triangle anchored by Charlottetown in the east, the second city of Summerside in the west, and the North Shore tourist area in the North) and for the peripheries, relatively underdeveloped and dependent on resource extraction, to suffer steady declines in population. Including suburbs, a third of PEI's population now lives in the greater Charlottetown area; probably a two-thirds majority, at least, within the triangle I mentioned.
Internal migration on PEI, too, seems to be at least somewhat correlated with emigration. I know that for my parents, settling in Charlottetown was an alternative to emigration, and that many people coming to Charlottetown end up plugging into networks which can produce migration (in government, or corporate, or cultural circles). That's been my experience.
4) What's going to happen with anti-Gypsy sentiment? I have no idea. But I'm not optimistic. If the lot of Eastern European Roma is getting better, I'm not seeing it.
Note that the Roma tend to have higher birthrates than the surrounding populations. (We could see this clearly in both Serbia and Romania.) What this means in the long run... really, I don't know.
The same trend is apparently discernable in eastern Slovakia. Apparently the major factor preventing Roma emigration is their sheer poverty--they simply can't afford the tickets to western Europe. If/when this changes ...
Posted by: Randy McDonald at May 30, 2004 11:02 PMFor those of you who can read German: There is an article about this topic in "Datum", a new Austrian magazine.
http://www.datum.at/ausgaben/html/DATUM-01_Sintflut.htm
The author cites a few examples where the "flood" hasn't come. Only the rich Russians came to spend money in the West and the Portuguese workers in Germany went home instead of more Portuguese coming to German.
Going home, staying home.
We should be afraid that all those "guest workers" leave our countries and go home.
Posted by: novala at May 30, 2004 11:36 PMI think I have to disagree with you on point #5, Gypsies, at least as far as Germany is concerned. I've not heard of any reference to the possibility and fear of a Roma migration. I'm not hearing or reading everything, of course. But, regarding German anxieties around EU expansion, I'd say it certainly doesn't amount to a point of its own. People are aware that this is not the kind of immigration they might see. They speak fearfully of immigration of Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, yes, but Gypsies, no. Maybe that's different for some of the other EU 15?
Posted by: Katja at June 2, 2004 08:20 AMIt's definitely a major point in both Great Britain and Ireland. In Britain, in particular, the tabloids grabbed the issue and ran with it.
I'm just guessing about this, but... I have a suspicion that the "gypsy" issue is probably stronger in those countries that don't actually border the new members. In places like Germany and Austria, it's replaced, or anyhow drowned out, by the "people right over the border" issue.
Doug M.