Brussels, 20/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - the Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs, George Papandreou, launched an appeal to Member States for a better opening up of the legal channels for economic immigration, in a managed partnership with countries of origin and countries of transit. At the conference organised by the Greek Presidency and the Athens Migration Policy Initiative in Athens on 15-16 May, he spoke on the theme of "Managing Migration for the Benefit of Europe" and declared that it was "the only way" for the Fifteen to successfully put into place the Seville Agenda and take control immigration and fight against illegal immigration. George Papandreou called for well managed system of immigration flows that allowed governments to acknowledge economic demands for labour and create legal ways of entry for immigrants. He hoped that by opening up legal channels for immigration, the EU could begin to ensure cooperation between countries of origin and transit in a common front against the traffic in human beings and illegal immigrant networks.
More than 150 experts met in Athens for this conference. The President of the EU Council stressed to them bot individual and collective responsibility of Member States in the fight against illegal immigration and the traffic in human beings. At the same time he put particular emphasis on the debate that should not be "Monopolised by illegal immigration". George Papandreou considered that despite this, Member States had "failed their public" and the values of the EU. "We must explain to our publics that immigration can help European economies - if we manage migration flows well. We must explain that immigrants come to Europe not only to improve their lives, but to contribute to the improvement in ours as well" if the EU invested in programmes for integrating them into our societies.
Opening the conference, Demetrios G. Papandreou, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute also declared that the completely authoritarian approach in negotiations with countries of emigration could not work. He declared that the possibility of immigration and obtaining visas had to be included. He also called on experts and politicians to abandon "our obsolete, divided and binary ways of managing immigration": immigration countries/emigration, economic/political, temporary/permanent immigration. He criticised the attitude of governments that refused to speak about immigration's positive aspects, except when extremist parties were growing. He focused on the scale of the migratory phenomenon in Europe: 1 in 7 people living in Germany was born in a different country, 1 in 8 in Greece and 1 in 3 in Luxembourg.
The conference tackled the question of immigration's importance faced with an ageing populating (issue that was the subject of great debate), methods for fighting illegal immigration, the labour market and immigration, immigrant selection schemes. Several participants criticised the fact that legal immigration channels were "almost blocked". Others questioned the will of the authorities in fighting against undeclared work.
Doris Meissner, former Commissioner for the USA service for immigration and naturalisation spoke about the US experience. The policy implemented since the beginning of the 1990s for fighting against illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America was based on three elements, she explained: sanctioning employers who took on illegal workers, strengthening border controls, putting in place a regularisation process for "compensating" the toughing up of policy. Ms Meissner thought that sanctions had "failed": legislation was too weak and that there were never sufficient means forgetting them respected. On the other hand, strengthening border controls had been effective. He stressed, however, the limits: the law could not prevent labour market realities or even when the policy against illegal immigration was being strengthened, the economy, in full boom, needed labour, qualified and unqualified with papers and without. Regularisation involved more than 3 million people. Meissner indicated that 11% of the population in the USA was not native to the country: this part of the population was composed of a third of naturalised people, a third from legal immigrants and a third who did not have papers. Illegals accounted for around 9 million people. She welcomed the will shown by the Mexican President, Vicente Fox, to put in place a common policy.
Meyer Burstein, consultant and former senior official at the immigration department in Canada cited an example from his country. He said that the programme for qualified workers migrating was seen unanimously as in the public interest and qualified workers as immigrants were widely considers as contributing to the prosperity of Canada. He also said that family migration, while corresponding to the values of Canada responded to private interests rather than that of the public. He stated that refugee policy was considered expensive but the costs were to be assumed as voluntary as Canada did pt limits on it.