The Many Faces of Europe

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Make Immigration Smarter
Europe is shrinking. Across the E.U., women are not having enough children to hold population levels steady. Europe's also aging. By 2050, over 30% of Europeans will be 65 or older, and there aren't enough young Europeans to replace their labor skills or pay for their pensions. And, if the E.U. seriously wants to achieve the Lisbon Agenda goal of becoming "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy in the world" by 2010, it will need way more highly qualified researchers than Europe's universities can turn out. The argument that immigration is to blame for the failings of multiculturalism ignores the numbers. Europe doesn't just need more immigrants; it also needs a wider variety of them.

Yet anti-immigrant movements are flourishing in places like Belgium, Britain, Germany and Italy. Last month, a group of ultranationalist M.E.P.s finally gathered enough members to create a formal caucus, giving them more political clout and making them eligible for E.U. funding. So immigration poses a two-part challenge for Europe: how to bring in the people it needs and how to do so without feeding the hysteria.

For some ideas, Europe could look to Canada, where immigrants make up 18% of the general population. Yet polls show that the majority of Canadians have a positive view of immigration. Some of this is thanks to the dedicated integration programs that local governments and ngos run. Support groups, counseling sessions, free language tuition, even buddy systems that bring immigrants together with born-and-bred Canadians all help smooth the transition for those coming to Canada and those who are there already. But the country is also picky about who it welcomes in the first place. Immigrants are selected using a system that awards each applicant a series of points on factors like age, qualifications, knowledge of English and past employment. "The target is young, educated migrants," says Randall Hansen, an immigration and citizenship expert at the University of Toronto. "It's based on attracting human capital."

France's Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicholas Sarkozy has advocated switching to a points-based immigration system. And Britain is already testing its own version, which targets both skilled and unskilled labor to fill gaps across the entire workforce. But Europe has generally been resistant to the idea. The main concern is that it would encourage illegal immigration (a problem that Canada, which shares its border with the world's richest country, doesn't have). There are an estimated 11-13 million non-European illegal immigrants in the E.U. But the European Commission is hoping to slash that number as part of a push to harmonize immigration policy across the E.U. One goal is to crack down on illegal migrants while also working with the African countries many of them come from. Non-E.U. countries, for example, could be given more access to Europe's universities and jobs if they promise to reintegrate their illegal immigrants. If Europe can improve its policies on immigration, then maybe Europeans will improve their attitudes. "There's public support for immigration in Canada because the widespread perception is that the border is firmly under control and everyone is respecting the system," says Hansen. "When you lose that perception, public support collapses."