Migration debate in Europe: getting it right

Though never far from the sidelines, the immigration debate in Europe gripped the headlines in early March after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said there are too many foreigners in France and pledged to halve their number.

The French President also threatened to withdraw from Europe’s Schengen open borders accord that allows passport-free travel between 23 EU states, unless more is done to stop illegal immigration.

In the midst of a heated re-election campaign in which illegal immigration is one of the key issues, Sarkozy gained points in the polls after those comments.

The President of the Migrant Policy Institute, a Washington and Brussels-based think tank, Dr. Demetrios Papademetriou says steps taken in this direction have so far fallen well short of that objective and stand “improbable” success.

“Mr Sarkozy will probably find it very, very difficult to actually be able to implement something like that because countries take on international obligations” such as those guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights and the requirement that families be able to reunify.

“So, Mr Sarkozy does not basically have the license to say no, you cannot reunify. Nor does he have the means to say asylum seekers will not make it to France. Because we all know that once an asylum seeker makes it into European space, whether it’s the Canary Islands or France, it’s very, very difficult to remove them.”

“Now, Mr Sarkozy will say, ‘I’ve been removing thirty thousand people each year,’ but 30,000 people each year is a drop in the ocean – and they are illegally resident people. So he’s going to have a very hard time achieving that goal unless of course he makes France so inhospitable that nobody would want to go there – that’s an entirely different story.”

In this interview with Tracey McClure, Dr. Papademetriou comments on anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe, Islamic integration, and suggests strategies to improving the EU’s track record on migration…
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