Europe must learn to embrace, not hinder, migrants

EUROPE has a problem with migrants — but not the problem that is highlighted regularly by politicians with their sights firmly set on elections.

Despite the headlines very few people from the southern Mediterranean have fled to Europe from the upheavals in North Africa, especially compared to the hundreds of thousands who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries.

Italy, where much of the controversy has been coming from, in fact takes in far fewer than most northern EU countries, choosing to send them on or deport them.

The problem is of the Europeans own making where they are failing to address the issues of integrating newcomers into society.

There is no uniform EU-wide definition for a migrant — in Sweden if one parent is even from neighbouring Norway, the children are considered migrants.

Migration is a natural and global phenomenon — not an illness. And now with falling birth rates, wealth decline and decreasing global power, the diminishing Europeans will need to recruit labour from outside its borders. In fact competition for talent and skills in short supply will become tougher in the EU as one country after another encounters the full effects of an aging population.

But instead of dealing with this, politicians are creating a nightmare out of a situation they have helped to create.

They give migrants the status of refugee, asylum seeker — or ‘right to remain’ in Ireland’s case — which has been described as an ingenious way to ensure these people can never be part of society but keep their mouths shut.

In some cases they want to shut down the borders and keep everyone out.

And now as politicians are whipping up xenophobia, they are cutting back on funding and facilities to allow migrants to become integrated, and not create a cycle of dependency.

They are building on misconceptions and ignoring facts such as the 1% increase in GDP for every 10% more trust generated between migrants and locals. They are fostering fear among people disturbed by economic uncertainty instead of looking at the facts.

In Berlin, for instance, with a small immigrant population, the unemployment rate is high compared with Stuttgart, with 40% from third countries, and an unemployment rate in the region of 6%.

A survey in the Hess region of Germany, which has suffered from populist pre-election xenophobic outbursts, found that what people have in common is human nature. Both migrants and locals felt more comfortable living beside someone of their own socio-economic background and preferred that they came from the same place.

And answers were the same from locals and migrants when it came to believing that migrants should do more to integrate.

And to contradict another fallacy, the vast majority of migrants felt more closely linked to Germany than their original country.