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07.04.11 EU: Migrants, Polls, Euro
The EU is based on freedom of movement, the freedom of businesses and individuals to move capital, goods, labor and services freely over the borders of member states. Despite freedom of movement guarantees, few EU nationals, about two percent of 501 million, move from one EU state to another.
The migration of non-EU nationals is regulated by each EU member states. EU leaders are often at the forefront of efforts to convince member states and their skeptical publics that well-managed migration is economically beneficial. One way to open doors wider to desired immigrants, they argue, is to minimize arrivals of unwanted migrants, including irregular migrants and asylum seekers not recognized as refugees.
EU leaders often highlight the aging of European populations, and employer complaints of shortages of workers in occupations ranging from nursing to engineering, to advocate more admissionist immigration policies in member states.
EU member states use both border and interior controls to deal with irregular and unwanted migrants. The Schengen agreement requires EU states to control entries from outside the EU, so that Greece or Spain check arrivals who may be headed to France or Germany. This effectively pushes the "borders" of some rich EU member states outward.
Suspicion that so-called "front-line" southern states are unable to prevent irregular migration has prompted especially northern European countries to increase internal enforcement, requiring migrants to carry IDs showing their status and checking these IDs in bus and train stations. Southern European states such as Greece, Italy and Spain are less successful at controlling their borders and the activities of migrants inside their countries, explaining why they have more unauthorized foreigners and periodic regularization programs.
Eurostat reported 1.4 million A8 EU nationals lived outside their country of birth in another EU member state in 2008. The leading countries of emigration were Romania, 384,000 emigrants (half in Italy), Poland, 266,000 (half in Germany), and Bulgaria, 91,000.
The European Court of Justice in March 2011 ruled that the Belgian government must issue residence and work permits to Colombian parents with Belgian-citizen children so that the parents can support their children. This so-called Zambrano decision may change policies in countries such as Denmark and Ireland that tried to deport the parents of children born in their countries.
In a bid to reduce parents appealing to stay because of children born in the country, several EU countries, including Ireland in 2005, ended birthright citizenship. Most European countries grant citizenship only to parents who are legally in the country for a certain period of time. For example, Germany since 2000 grants German citizenship to children born of parents who have been legally in the country at least eight years.
Polls. Most respondents in polls believe that governments are doing a poor job managing migration, according to the 2010 Transatlantic Trends Immigration (www.transatlantictrends.org). The share of respondents agreeing that their government was doing a poor job managing immigration was 73 percent in the US, 70 percent in the UK, and about 60 percent in Spain and France. Canada was the only country in which more residents thought the government was doing a good job managing migration, 48 percent, than a poor job, 43 percent.
A majority of Americans saw immigration as more of a problem than an opportunity. Americans, asked to guess the share of US residents born abroad, guessed an average 39 percent. In fact, about 14 percent of US residents are foreign born; with their US-born children, about 20 percent of US residents are immigrants or their children. Residents of other countries also overestimated the foreign share of residents. Italians estimated an average 25 percent of residents were foreigners in 2010, when there were seven percent foreigners.
One theme of Transatlantic Trends was that Canadians are most satisfied with their country's immigration policy and US and UK residents least satisfied. Those polled who had lost jobs recently were most likely to see immigrants as a labor market threat, especially in the US and UK. Employed residents of countries with segmented or insider-outsider labor markets such as Italy are least likely to see immigrants as a labor market threat. Most Europeans, except for the British, support giving legal and illegal foreigners access to social benefits such as public health care, even though they agree that immigrants are a burden because they receive more in social benefits than they pay in taxes.
Europeans expressed more concern about the integration of immigrants, especially Muslims, while Americans and Canadians were most optimistic about immigrant integration, including of Muslims. Spanish residents made the sharpest distinction between the integration of immigrants generally, which most thought was going well, and the integration of Muslim immigrants, which most thought was going badly.
Many French and Italian residents associate more immigration with more crime. Most Europeans oppose allowing the EU, which has urged member states to open more doors for immigrants to an aging Europe, to set national immigration levels. Most Europeans favor a demand approach to migration management, admitting only newcomers who have job offers, rather than the supply approach of giving points for education, youth, and knowledge of the local language and assuming that newcomers with these characteristics will find jobs.
In most countries, more residents favor removing than favor legalizing unauthorized foreigners. Large majorities favor increased border and interior controls to prevent the illegal entry and employment of foreigners.
The Migration Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) assesses the integration policies of 31 countries (www.integrationindex.eu). The 2011 ranking found Sweden to have the best integration policies in 2011, followed by Portugal, Canada, Finland and the Netherlands.
A8. Nationals of the so-called A8 Central European countries that joined the EU May 1, 2004 will gain full freedom of movement rights on May 1, 2011, including the right to apply for unemployment and housing benefits in countries such as the UK. The UK Department for Work and Pensions promised to use the so-called habitual residence test to prevent so-called "benefit tourism" from poorer EU countries with less-generous welfare benefits.
In the UK, foreigners can access means-tested benefits only if they have the right to reside in the UK, which in turn requires them to be able to support themselves. In March 2011, the UK Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that a Russian-born Latvian who was an EU national could not be deported, but she was also not entitled to British pension benefits. The European Court of Justice has ruled in similar cases that the rights of EU nationals are more important than the desire of EU member states to avoid "benefit tourism," setting the stage for EU-national government clashes.
Poland's Labor minister predicted that the major effect of freedom of movement in May 2011 would be to legalize what she estimated were 300,000 to 400,000 Poles working illegally in Germany. Some German economists estimate that 100,000 additional Poles may move to Germany to work after May 1, 2011.
Euro. Greece and Ireland were bailed out by the European Central Bank and the IMF, but Portugal, Spain, and Italy avoided bailouts in winter 2012. French and German leaders defended the Euro as the key to keeping Europe firmly on the road toward closer economic and political cooperation. One outcome of the debt crisis, some suggested, could be implementing economic policies in all 17 EU countries that share the Euro such as raising the retirement age to reduce debt and increase competitiveness.
EU leaders embraced a "competitiveness pact" advanced by France and Germany in winter 2011 aimed at ensuring that governments using the Euro avoid excessive government debts. Germany wants Euro-zone members to make legally binding commitments to abolish wage indexation systems and to reform pensions and corporate taxes to avoid future debt crises.
The competitiveness pact would have Germany providing more money to bail out indebted European countries in exchange for more fiscal discipline in indebted countries in the future. Some of the smaller Euro-zone countries complained that national governments would lose the power under the competitiveness pact to determine their macroeconomic policies and that the Euro zone would effectively spread German-style economic discipline to the Euro zone.
Unemployment at the end of 2010 averaged 10 percent in the 17-country Euro area, and ranged from over 20 percent in Spain to less than five percent in the Netherlands and Austria.
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