Old problems, new aspects

The topic of immigration is one of the main challenges faced by the countries of the European Union. Although immigration policy remains the prerogative of national governments, the EU is quite actively trying to develop common approaches and measures aimed at the harmonization of national laws on immigration and real resolution of urgent problems connected with the global phenomenon of migration. This article looks at the fundamentals and strategies of the new immigration policy of the European Union.

A common immigration policy is one of most topical and at the same time utterly problematic tasks of the European integration. The phenomenon of migration is an external factor to the EU member countries, with all of them feeling it to various degrees.

The correlation of the country’s attractiveness and accessibility makes it the target of immigration flows. Above all it refers to economic attractiveness, whereas not the least role is played by such factors as geomorphology, climate, the availability of potential integration, immigration laws, the system of social security, etc. For example, Spain essentially differs from Finland in terms of geographical location and climate conditions, whereas new EU members can hardly compete with Germany in terms of economic attractiveness. Swedish immigration laws are considerably more liberal than Italian, but the Italian labor market has a higher number of jobs.

Therefore, immigration produces absolutely different effects on each European state. On the one hand, the EU attempts to develop a common policy in the questions of migration and asylum, but on the other hand, most of these measures are carried out within national legislation systems and are based on the intergovernmental cooperation.

The Amsterdam Treaty of 1999 was the first legal act to extend EU’s competence in the sphere of immigration. In the past ten years a number of legal and normative acts have been passed to develop a common European policy on questions of immigration. Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden have proved to be especially active in this process. During the Finnish presidency in 1998 the EU adopted the first pan-European program, the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice (1999–2004), which outlined the general principles and areas of immigration policy. It was followed by the Hague Program (2005–10), which defines the concrete mechanisms of control over the migration flows, visa policy, as well as the means of combating terrorism and organized crime. No later than in December 2009 the European Council is going to ratify the new Stockholm Program for 2010–14, which is outlined below.

Operational steps on the way of implementation of the abovementioned programs included the establishment of FRONTEX, European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, with its headquarters located in Warsaw (2005); the implementation of the Visa Information System Program (VIS) to coordinate the way visas are issued (2007); the adoption of the Return Directive on joint procedures of repatriation of illegal immigrants (2008). The EU Immigration and Asylum Pact, adopted in 2008, when France had the EU presidency, became a programmatic document. This is a political, rather than legal, document, but its overall objective is to curb the migration flows, specifically through the implementation of selective immigration.1

In this context, the report of the European Commission entitled “Global Approach to Migration” (2008) is remarkable – it seeks to set a dialogue and partnerships with the countries of migrants’ origin.

Most likely, the adoption of the abovementioned Stockholm Program, scheduled for December 2009, will follow the compromise between two opposite approaches to the phenomenon of immigration existing within the EU: a conventional one, linking immigration above all with questions of internal security of the member countries, i.e., based on restricting and repressive measures, and a liberal one, which brings to the foreground the problems of integration and upholding human rights. So, the program’s main idea, offered by the Swedish side, which has developed the program, is to improve the policy of “closed borders,” now being carried out by the EU with regard to immigrants via the development of a new positive concept with a broader and fuller interpretation of the phenomenon of immigration.

Today’s immigration to the EU has largely economic character.2 Therefore, the immigration policy of most EU member countries is implemented based on the regulation of migration flows and lies in the establishment of annual quotas for legal entry of foreigners depending on the needs of the domestic labor market. The immigrant statistics are accounted on the basis of national entry visas for long-term sojourn, issued by the offices of internal affairs. It means that the official statistics of the immigration services do not take into account the illegal migrants: their real numbers are practically impossible to calculate, but usually they are considerably higher than the number of legally staying foreign citizens.

The phenomenon of illegal migration is quite ambiguous. On the one hand, it poses real threats to the internal security of the EU countries; on the other hand, for numerous categories of migrants an illegal entry is the only possible way to penetrate into these countries’ territory, taking into consideration the severe norms of their laws on migration. Thus, illegal immigration frequently becomes the first step on the way to acquiring a legal immigrant status, because in view of the existing problems, European governments have to conduct mass legalization from time to time. For example, in September 2009 the Italian government conducted a mass legalization of the working category of house maids and women who take care of elderly people. As a result, it became possible to grant legal status to 263,000 former illegal immigrants in Italy, including many Ukrainians. However, according to the data provided by the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs, this figure is not even half of the total number of individuals who are working illegally in this category.

Generally, the principles and approaches applied by the European states in their immigration policies, reflect the historical and cultural peculiarities of each country. One can distinguish three groups of EU countries. The first one includes the traditional countries of immigration, first of all Great Britain and France. Their colonial past and past-colonial realities prompted them to carry out fairly open immigration policies, starting from the 1950s and practically to the present day. Germany should also be included in the list, as a special immigration regime concerning the Turkish citizens was functioning there after World War II. In the past years a mass flow of immigrants from Central and East European countries came to Germany. As a result it has taken the first place among the European countries in terms of the number of immigrants.

Second and third place are taken by Spain and Italy, respectively. However, immigration to these countries (as well as to Ireland and Norway) is relatively new. Until recently they were characterized by emigration, the direct opposite of immigration. This trend was reversed only 10-20 years ago, caused by the rapid economic growth of these countries and the massive flow of foreigners to their territories.

At the same time, an abrupt transition of these countries from emigration to immigration has generated a number of problems, ranging from sociopolitical to anthropological and psychological ones. These new countries of immigration witness most frequent incidents of xenophobia and racism. Therefore, the problem is often resolved on the institutional level. One of the methods consists in reminding the country’s own citizens of their recent history, marked by dramatic experience of immigration.3 Against this background, it is remarkable that contrary to widespread stereotypes, the migration flows to these countries have European roots, with migrants coming from, in particular, recent EU member countries, above all Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria.

The new EU members make up the third group of countries, where the indices of emigration have been higher than those of immigration by now. The situation, with few exceptions, is typical of the majority of the abovementioned countries. EU membership and the implementation of political and economic reforms in this context have essentially cut the emigration flows of the countries’ citizens and created conditions for the return of earlier emigrants. In particular, this applies to Poland, whose citizens have begun to come back from Great Britain and Ireland. Besides, the qualitatively new situation in these countries makes them attractive to immigrants from Eastern European countries, above all Ukraine and Belarus.

1 The document implements the so-called “blue card,” an analogue of the American green card, i.e., a unified residence and work permit issued to immigrants with high professional qualification (above all, engineers, programmers, chemists, and pharmacists).

2 Such categories as immigration for family reunion and seeking asylum do not have a crucial influence on macro-economic indices.

3 The Italian capital has recently opened the National Museum of Emigration to preserve the historical memory and educate contemporary generations of Italians on the basis of its lessons.