Posted on 09/13/2007 7:22:50 PM PDT by blam
EU told to open door to 20m migrant workers
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 2:56am BST 14/09/2007
A huge increase in economic migration into the EU is being proposed by the European Commission.
It wants to relax controls and open the borders to an extra 20 million workers from Asia and Africa over the next two decades.
That would more than double the present non-EU resident population now living in the 27 member states. It now stands at about 18 million out of a total of around 490 million.
The Commission is drawing up a new ''blue card'' scheme - modelled on the American ''green card'' work permit - allowing qualified migrants the right to live, work and travel in the EU.
The plan marks a renewed push to convince member states to adopt a single fast-track immigration policy.
Despite greater harmonisation in recent years, EU countries still operate their own programmes and quotas.
Britain is not signed up to common EU borders, but would still be affected if the plans went ahead.
Under the commission's proposals, once overseas migrants had been in an EU state for five consecutive years they would be free to travel where they wished.
The Tories said the British ''opt in'' to EU asylum and immigration plans would be rendered pointless by such a policy.
"Under these proposals anyone who has lived for five years anywhere in the EU would be allowed to stay permanently,'' said David Davis, the shadow home secretary.
He added: "Since this would be in addition to already large-scale immigration, the stress placed on housing, public services and community relations in the UK would be enormous.
"It is vital that the UK Government retains complete control over who is allowed to come to the UK.
"It should not allow the EU to create loopholes that would make a mockery of a sensible, well-balanced immigration system."
The new EU policy was outlined by Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, at a conference of immigration ministers in Portugal yesterday.
He said Europe needed labour, both skilled and unskilled, because of a fall in the population of working age. America was also attracting more qualified workers than were coming to the EU, Mr Frattini added.
He said that while illegal immigration had to be curtailed, skilled migrants should be ''actively encouraged''.
"We have to look at immigration as an enrichment and as an inescapable phenomenon of today's world, not as a threat.
"We should take more account of what statistics tell us: 85 per cent of unskilled labour goes to the EU and only five per cent to the USA, whereas 55 per cent of skilled labour goes to the USA and only five per cent to the EU. We have to reverse these figures with a new vision."
Mr Frattini said that despite recent EU expansion pushing the bloc's total population to 490 million, the working population was declining.
By 2050, a third of residents in the 27 countries would be aged over 65.
He said countries with rapid recent economic growth, such as Ireland and Spain, had benefited from the inflow of skilled workers from elsewhere in the EU and beyond.
"All skill levels are required," Mr Frattini said. "The challenge is to attract the workers needed to fill specific gaps."
He said immigration was still a far too negatively loaded term in Europe, and that had to change.
EU members states all operate different skilled immigration programmes.
Britain is moving to a points-based work permit system from next year aimed at attracting more skilled workers and removing settlement rights from unskilled migrants.
Germany requires a job offer with a minimum salary of 85,000 euros (£58,000) a year for migrants who are hoping to get a work permit.
With growing signs that the world economy may be about to go into reverse after years of growth, the commission's proposals could run into stiff opposition from member states worried about high unemployment.
There are also anti-migrant tensions in parts of Europe that would be stoked by an open door approach.
However, Jose Socrates, the prime minister of Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, urged support for the proposal.
He said it was crucial to meet labour shortages and curb illegal immigration and people trafficking.
Naw, if anything the greater part of the background is North African, Arab and other Mediterranean types. The Indian component is modest.
increase the euro birthrate
and forget the hired help
that wants to kill you.
A bit of irony to have to “import” workers considering both Germany and France have double-digit unemployment. It really comes as no surprise though considering the state of the EU welfare state.
Yup. Pretty much the same as here.
1. See post #10 The term “Hispanic” is not used for the people of Spain or Portugal — it’s an American term.
2. There is negligible N. African or Arab blood in Central/South America.
Then what are all those guys with Spanish names doing running around the place.
Don't you think that just maybe Spain successfully colonized and settled those countries?
Read the history of Spain someday and then get back to me with your argument that there's little Arab and North African background drifting around the place.
Tell me Shakira doesn't exist while you're at it!
Brazil is home to more Africans than any other country outside Africa.
Maybe Europe should do what the Russians did - have a stay-home-and-make-babies day.
That effort is too late for them too. The Muslims and Chinese will divide up Russia one day.
If the invasion isn’t stopped the US will become a third world nation in five years.
While there is some Spanish blood in C/S America, it is mostly in the upper class, who do not sneak over the border. The Indian and Native peoples were not eradicated or moved to reservations, but just became the poor folk who come here as illegal aliens. They are MUCH closer in blood to the Navajos, say, than to Spaniards.
You are probably referring to Africans from the slave trade, not North Africans/Arabs. I suspect that the US has at least as many “Africans” in that sense as Brazil.
No, Brazil has more.
They NEED the extra workers to expand the economy, or the Socialist benifit/onzi scheme falls apart.
It’s the same reason Democrats are so desperate to legalize the illegals here.
We are but a few years away from a budget crisis of UNIMAGINABLE proportions, as the bill for 40+ years of Liberalism is coming due, in both Social Security and Gub’ment spending and benefits.
I guess you’re right. That was an awful lot of slaves.....
Historical Review: Megadrought And Megadeath In 16th Century Mexico (Hemorrhagic Fever)
"The epidemic of cocoliztli from 1545 to 1548 killed an estimated 5 million to 15 million people, or up to 80% of the native population of Mexico (Figure 1). In absolute and relative terms the 1545 epidemic was one of the worst demographic catastrophes in human history, approaching even the Black Death of bubonic plague, which killed approximately 25 million in western Europe from 1347 to 1351 or about 50% of the regional population."
"The cocoliztli epidemic from 1576 to 1578 cocoliztli epidemic killed an additional 2 to 2.5 million people, or about 50% of the remaining native population."
That was one of the reasons African slaves were imported into the Americas ~ the Indians died.
Now, regarding those folks with the heavy tans wandering about ~ their ancestors came from Spain where their people had lived for most of a millenium. As the Moslems gradually lost power in Iberia through the many centuries of the Reconquista, they also lost social class. Laws and agreements regarding "conversion/forced conversion" served to gradually convert the broad masses of Moslem settler populations into a very Catholic, but poor, peasant population. In the end they were among the first to leap at the chance to emigrate to the Americas.
No doubt the first 200 years of emigration from Iberia (to Brazil and New Spain) did something to change the balance of ethnotypes left behind in Iberia.
Do not confuse today's Spaniards with those who were more typical the day Columbus came back with his reports of crossing the Atlantic.
Yes, it is a relatively modern term. It’s extremely useful in dividing people.
As much as you try to deny it, the fact is that the chicanos are ethnically much more Indian than they are Spanish, and no way North African, as you try to suggest. They most often have the AmerIndian features and coloring that show their bloodlines. If you refuse to accept that, it’s your problem, not mine.
The Indians mostly died in a series of horrible plagues that swept the Americas shortly after the arrival of the first Europeans and Africans.
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