The New Europe: Migrants and Refugees
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"Arrivals at Tilbury. The Empire Windrush brings to Britain 500 Jamaicans. Many are ex-servicemen who know Britain. They served this country well. In Jamaica they couldn't find work. Discouraged, but full of hope, they sailed for Britain - citizens of the Britsih Emppire coming to the mother country witgh good intent. Prodded by public opinion, the Colonial Office gives them a more cordial reception that was at first envisaged." A newsreel from 1948 reporting the festive welcome that was extended to the first organised group of immigrants from the Caribbean to arrive in Britain. They were to be followed by thousands of others to feed Britain's labour-starved economy in the post-war years. Nowadays, new arrivals - who come mostly through illegal channels - can expect an altogether different welcome. "You have to wait there until you are called. And another Sri Lankan? What's your name, please..." These are the words which greet asylum-seekers at the offices of Refugee Helpline, an advice centre in Dover. This major British channel port serves as an arrival point for many refugees who come to Britain - via France - from all over the world. It was partly to overcome the differences in the French and British approaches to refugees that the European Commission was entrusted with drawing up proposals for harmonizing asylum policies across the EU. Their publication in mid-September was completely overshadowed by the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Yet the issues of tighter border controls, increased co-operation over illegal migrants and dealing with refugees are closely intertwined - the more so now if there's a fresh wave of asylum-seekers from Afghanistan. Security, in one form or another, is an important element in all these areas. Professor Christian Joppke of the European University in Florence, is the author of several works on migration: "It is on the one hand a problem of security, as it is being perceived and deliberately built up at the European Union level where the notion of security is one big legitimizer of increasing Europeanisation and increasing building of a supra-national bureaucracy and polity. But that's not just all rhetoric: it is, indeed, a problem that touches the ordinary people on the street. Look at Italy. The inner zones of cities, like Turin, have entirely been left to drug dealers, prostitutes. Certainly right-wing forces in this country are capitalising on it. But there are real security issues connected to contemporary wild immigration flows." Given the shared concern across western Europe about the security aspects of migration - and the populist campaigns whipped up by right-wing politicians and sections of the media - it would be only natural to assume that EU countries are working hand-in-hand in dealing with asylum-seekers. The more so since they agreed at the Dublin summit at the beginning of the 1990s to streamline their practice by sending asylum-seekers back to the first EU country those would-be refugees entered. Yet this is far from being the case as Johannes van der Klaauw, Senior European Affairs Officer of the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, points out: "A few member-states, particularly Germany and to a certain extent France, have taken the view that persecution in the sense of the Geneva convention definition of a refugee can only emanate from the state. And this has been the cause of problems in, for instance, implementing the Dublin system. The UK courts have, in the past, blocked the transfer of asylum-seekers from the UK to Germany or France precisely because the court said, if this person has his claim processed in France or Germany, he or she will not get the same treatment as in the UK, because in the UK he will get refugee status whereas in France or Germany he won't because he is the victim of persecution of oppositional parties." Britain's more inclusive interpretation of the 1951 Geneva convention on refugees is not the only reason why it's become a magnet attracting asylum-seekers. Its policies also differ in other respects. Unlike France where it can take nearly a year for an asylum-seeker to be registered as such - and during that time the applicant is not entitled to any state benefits - in Britain a refugee is registered on arrival. And unlike Germany, which returns large numbers of refugees across its borders to Poland and the Czech Republic - countries considered safe for asylum-seekers - Britain tends not use this form of instant deportation. Nicola Rogers, deputy Director of Advice on Individual Rights in Europe, a London-based advisory centre, explains: "The real problem with states outside the EU is that there's an overlap between those countries that are wishing to accede to the EU and those countries that are still refugee-generating in themselves. And in this regard we can point to the Czech Republic which does still generate refugees but, on the other hand, is so close to becoming an EU member-state. And that's a contradiction and a difficulty for refugee law." It's a difficulty that Britain has tried to overcome in a novel way by posting immigration officials to Prague airport in a bid to filter out potential bogus asylum-seekers. But this practice of pre-travel immigration controls has run into opposition from human rights groups which have denounced it as discriminatory - even racist - because large numbers of Czech Roma (or gypsies) have been singled out and prevented from travelling to the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the Czech Republic and its neighbours have already been told by Brussels to tighten up border controls so they can establish a much tougher regime on their eastern borders when, as expected, they join the EU in three or four years' time. It's a requirement for new members who automatically join the so-called Schengen system of firm external borders. But it's a condition that's unfair twice over, according to Jan Zielonka, a Polish-born professor at the European University: "Although they are the weakest partners within the European Union, they are asked to take the greatest burden of controlling their borders. And for some countries in Eastern Europe who are going to join the European Union, taking this burden on their shoulders means not only financial costs and administrative problems, it is also cutting their relations with co-nationals just outside their borders. Many Hungarians and Poles are living in countries further east and south. They just cannot forget about family ties like the Germans never wanted to forget about their family ties further east, even though there was a hard border with the Warsaw Pact countries." With such problems just round the corner, Hungary has already passed legislation to provide a range of benefits - including free education and health care - to fellow-Hungarians who visit it from neighbouring countries. That, in turn, has led to a dispute with Romania and Slovakia, which see the latest moves as part of the Hungarian government's plans to draw ethnic Hungarians in those countries closer to Budapest. In any case, Professor Zielonka thinks the creation of new, hard borders is both wrong and ineffective as a way of dealing with refugees and migrants: "It's counter-productive because you just cannot seal the borders for people and believe that the border for goods will be open as it was before. Secondly, I believe sealing the borders creates an attractive market for illegal immigration. And third, the whole enlargement project was about abolishing the borders of Europe, and now we are in the business of installing new borders - shifting them further east, maybe but not really trying to do away with something which was the symbol of the Cold War." Divisive or not, west European governments are stepping up efforts to contain the flow of refugees by establishing more stringent border controls. They are also increasingly working together with countries, such as Albania and Bosnia-Hercegovina, which are both major providers of would-be refugees as well as springboards for the arrival of asylum-seekers from third countries - Afghans, Kurds, Chinese and others. But Albania's President, Rexhep Meidani, says co-operation needs also to take other forms: "We are trying to co-operate better with our neighbours - particularly with Greece and Italy - to fight this trafficking. But for me this is not quite enough because these people entering Albania are not, let's say, dropping down from the sky. They are passing through other territories so we have to create also the same structures with other countries, like Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. Also Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia, and having these common structures, we can fight better this kind of trafficking." Within the EU itself, part of the effort is being directed towards the harmonisation of asylum policies. That doesn't simply mean tightening up on refugee policies; it can also mean in some cases adopting more generous provisions across the EU so as to avoid the practice of asylum-seekers shopping around, choosing the countries that treat them best and thereby putting too much pressure on the resources of their favourite host-nations. The European Commission's new proposals follow the British practice of accepting as refugees even those who are not necessarily the victims of persecution by a state. The British Minister in charge of immigration, Lord Rooker, welcomes the expected change across Europe: "Within the European Union there aren't any unsafe countries. And therefore, there is no excuse for anyone reaching the European Union borders to move from the country they first gained safety in. That's what we would like to see. What we need to do is to arrange for a set of policies where the traffickers in people cannot play off one European country against another. And that would be our ideal situation, really, where we keep our individual differences, run the system within a common European Union but not allow ourselves to be picked off." Traffickers are not just playing off one EU country against each other. They are also preying on their customers - the illegal migrants - who face many dangers, including even death. As for the harmonisation of asylum policies, like so many other EU intiatives, it's likely to take long - perhaps another three years - and it will contain opt-outs and possible loopholes. In the meantime, the British government is looking at ways of adopting a tougher approach towards bogus asylum-seekers and the organised gangs that smuggle in illegal immigrants while, at the same time, making better provisions for integrating genuine refugees and facilitating other limited forms of immigration. Lord Rooker explains: "We are looking in one area at a package of managed migration - which would be some routes for settlement, some ways for more systematic temporary admission because we know they are a big contribution to our economy. However, there isn't a net benefit if more and more people come in illegally and go and work illegally in the unreformed economy because they would be in bondage to their people traffickers for ever. What we have to do is certainly we've got to undermine the organised people trafficking. There's certainly no question about that." Meanwhile, others are arguing for much more sweeping solutions - including allowing in economic migrants on a large scale. They believe the current 200,000 or so asylum-seekers in western Europe each year could be converted into guest workers. This would help plug the labour gap in key sectors of the EU's economy; undermine the criminal gangs involved in human trafficking; and reduce the cost of providing for refugees. But it's not a solution that would make a big difference according to Professor Joppke: "I am sceptical if such policies would, indeed, significantly reduce the problems of human smuggling, crime, and illegality connected with contemporary immigration. The United States has the biggest single immigration programme in the world. But it is, nevertheless, dealing with significant problems of border control and illegal immigration, particularly over the southern border with Mexico. So if that experience tells us anything, then it tells us that the legalisation of immigration does not extinguish the problem of illegal immigration." Human rights advocates, such as Nicola Rogers, also dismiss the idea that asylum-seekers are merely economic migrants in disguise. But she believes there's room for a more pragmatic approach in western Europe: "The people who come and claim asylum in western European states - generally speaking - do want to be recognized as such. They want to have full refugee status in recognition of the persecution that they faced. However, Western European countries should also be realistic about the extent to which asylum-seekers and refugees do fill a labour gap. And in their strategy they have to build in the fact that immigration is also going to be necessary particularly, with an aging population and the fact that the populations of western Europe, generally speaking, do not want to do low-skill labour any more." With a new refugee crisis on the borders of Afghanistan, it's only a question of time before a fresh wave of Afghan asylum seekers arrive in western Europe. While repressive regimes and poverty continue to blight the lives of many nations around the world, western Europe - and the developed world in general - will remain a powerful source of attraction for those seeking a better life. Albania's President Meidani makes a plea for more help: "You will always have these problems, and Europe will suffer from this if the other countries will have a lower standard of living or in a lower level of economic development. So it's quite important to help these countries - Albania included - to have the kind of rapid economic development, and through this development, to ensure the normal conditions of life for people in Albania and in other countries in the region - the same also for other poor countries."
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