Europe's
Immigration Quandary
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 3, 2000
LONDON - Can it go on? Why should it go on? And,
anyway, what real long run benefits does it bring? These
are the still unanswered questions that fifty years of
massive immigration into Europe pose. The last ten years
the questioning has been relatively muted. The European
economies under-performed and European governments
finally, if belatedly, put into place common immigration
policies that weakened a flow that was diminished anyway
by the slackening of demand.
But the big questions from the 1960s and 70s are back
with a vengeance. Economic activity is picking up fast
and some governments, such as the Spanish, are letting it
be known they are more in favour of renewed immigration.
The whole 60's belief system is being dusted off: that
immigration oils the cogs and wheels of the economy,
especially the bit down below decks where the heavy
lifting is done. Moreover, it was said, as immigration
reduces labour bottlenecks, it counters inflationary
pressures.
Thirty years ago Spain was a country of emigration.
France, in particular, was flooded with Spanish workers
and, from these Atlantic islands off the coast of Africa,
the Spanish emigrated by the shipload to Venezuela.
Today Spain is one of the fastest growing economies of
Europe. Particularly in the south, in the agricultural
areas growing hothouse winter vegetables and fruits,
there is a great demand for cheap labour. Africa is near.
For decades Moroccans especially have dared death or
captivity to make the sixteen kilometre crossing of the
Mediterranean at its neck. Now black Africans from as far
away as war-torn Sierre Leone and economically unstable
Nigeria are making the perilous journey through wild
Atlantic seas to the Canary Islands. The papers in Spain
are full of the interception at the beginning of the week
of a small boat off the coast of Fuerteventura, the
Spanish island lying closest to the African coast. It was
full of Nigerians, including two children and two
pregnant women. The coastguard also discovered in the sea
close by the dead body of an African.
For now the numbers remain manageable, but "for how
long?" asks Senora Natividad Cano, Feurteventura's
director for social affairs."Fuerteventura has been
converted into the port of entry for Europe."
Many are returned from whence they came. But more slip
through the thin net and those who employ them seem to
have influential political connections. Spain recently
legalized 70,000 immigrants. Yet their economic and
political sponsors are slow to move when it comes to
making a decent life for those the government allows to
stay. Many of these immigrants on the mainland live in
hovels, surrounded by a hostile populace. In February,
crowds attacked these rudimentary lodgings and burnt them
down, a rampage brought on by the Moroccan murder of a
local.
In every country in Europe, as the economy swings into
a healthy upturn, the immigration debate is becoming
re-engaged. Jobs, especially in the bottom rungs of the
ladder, are becoming scarce. Should Europe open up again,
or be prepared to slow down the economy?
Even to those like myself who are both pro the free
market and pro the intermingling of people there is a
sense, albiet expressed reluctantly, that enough is now
enough. We are still digesting the influx of the 60s and
70s, some countries better than others. This earlier
massive migration, whatever good it did to a few sectors
of the economy, to many of the first generation
immigrants themselves and to our ignorance of the music,
the cuisine and the culture of far away peoples, created
a series of hard-to-deal-with problems for which society
is still paying the bills.
It also enabled society to put on hold older problems
it should have been forced to confront earlier. In
particular, it postponed the reorganization of economic
life in the most humdrum parts of the economy, putting
off the day when menial jobs should have been re-shaped
to have more appeal to unemployed locals. It also
postponed the day when a lot of businesses, in particular
those in textile manufacturing and agriculture, should
have packed up and re-located in the lands from which the
immigrants came.
For society at large, a new wave of immigration
greases the wheels and keeps the inflationary demons at
bay but, over time, the costs outweigh the benefits. Once
the immigrants are settled, their families re-united or
reproduced, their own demands can become inflationary.
Their need for housing, schools and social services can
make the net effect of their presence a fiscal burden.
Even in America, which for now accepts it is a country of
immigration, and the process of social adapting and
adopting is more smooth, economists find it hard to prove
that latter day immigration has been a significant
economic plus over the long run.
Europe, a continent not used to immigration despite
various waves throughout history, is not instinctively
welcoming. Quite the reverse, its raw impulses are
hostile. It is the working class who have to bear the
social brunt of immigration, not the intellectuals or
economists who explain its supposed benefits, even
allure. It is this hostility that has helped ensure that
a large number of the second generation of the earlier
immigrants find themselves ill-educated, alienated,
unemployed and, in too many cases, attracted to crime.
(And it must never be overlooked that first generation
immigrants had a crime rate well below the local
average.)
A new large wave of immigration is the last thing
Europe is ready for; it will take at least another
generation's hard work to get on top of the problems of
the last.
It will not be easy even in a time of economic growth
to find the answers. Immigration as a quick fix, as in
modern Spain, is a tempting, if ill-considered, way to
go. But why, with its increasingly open internal borders,
should the rest of Europe accept Spain's ill-thought out
response? Surely the European Union must pressure Spain
to think again.
There are indications that the penny is beginning to
drop about alternatives. As the scientific reports start
to land on ministers' desks telling them before too long
people may start to expect to live until they are 180,
the realization is belatedly dawning how nonsensical are
the policies and attitudes of the last decade that
encouraged firms and institutions to encourage retirement
at age 60 or even earlier. Here, in fact, in premature
retirement is an enormous pool of potential labour.
Holland, in particular, has shown what a flexible and
useful resource it is, as long as employers themselves
become less rigid and more imaginative in the way they
hire and deploy their workforce.
Perhaps the great immigration debate should now become
the great re-organization debate.
- - - - -
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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