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Europe welcomes young migrants
09/03/2001 11:52 - (SA)
Clare Murphy
Vienna - As "asylum shoppers," "bogus refugees" and "economic migrants" find a home in politicians' tirades, experts urge that, in fact, the EU needs more immigrants to fill a worrying demographic deficit.
The 15-member EU may feel itself inundated with immigrants, but the 15-member European Union is in fact looking at a population decline.
"We need migrants. We need a much more rational and positive attitude towards immigration," said Dr Wolfgang Lutz, a demographic analyst at the Vienna-based EU observation centre for family policy, OeIF.
Some EU countries are already filling more coffins than cradles, and the average 1.45 births per female is well below the level needed to maintain the union's 377-million-strong population, according to the OeIF's latest report.
If the fertility rate remains constant and immigration is further restricted, the current population of the EU could drop by as much as 20 percent by the middle of this century and be slashed in half in a century's time, according to the report's figures.
Immigrants in the EU, both legal and clandestine, made up just four percent of the total population last year, according to figures from the EU's racism watchdog, EUMC.
"Without a doubt, the tendency EU-wide is towards more restrictive immigration policies," said EUMC spokesperson Bent Sorensen, noting that the number of legally accepted immigrants fell by around 30 percent over the course of the 1990s.
EU countries are already feeling the pressure of a growing ageing population combined with fewer and fewer people of working age to make the insurance contributions to support state pensions and elderly health care.
The proportion of those over 60 to those of working age is due to become more skewed as those who were born in the 1960s baby boom reach retirement age from the year 2020 onwards.
"One consequence is that the retirement age will spiral upwards. We could be in the work force until we are seventy plus to support ourselves," said Lutz.
"Besides the obvious problem that no-one would want to be working at that age, there's also the question of the EU's economic competitiveness. An ageing labour force is not particularly innovative or productive," he said.
The southern states of the Italy and Spain are witnessing the lowest birth rates in the EU, with 1.2 children per woman. A 2.1 average is needed to keep a population constant.
Pro-natalist efforts like offering women cash to bear kids, particularly favoured by right-wing parties, have had limited success.
According to research cited in the OeIF report, increasing financial incentives to women by 25 percent results in a meager four percent increase in the birth rate, or 0.07 children per woman.
"It's not just about cash in hand. Modern young women want both careers and babies, and state facilities like childcare and kindergarten places need to be in place to allow them to do this," said Lutz.
"The southern European countries are more traditional and facilities which allow women to do both are not good. So they're choosing careers and fewer babies," he said.
But even in the more child friendly Scandinavian countries, where childcare provision is much better, the fertility rate is also declining.
Migrants, who often travel thousands of miles to their destination, tend not to be pensioners, but are both young and economically active.
Despite the recurring profile of the migrant in Europe's right-wing media as lazy and scrounging, some politicians have recently weighed in with the counter argument.
"Self-selection by migrants is likely to mean that they are more resourceful, entrepreneurial and ambitious than the norm," Britain's minister for immigration, Barbara Roche, said recently.
Last week, nine immigrants found a new way to smuggle themselves into Britain, in a demonstration of their ambition to join Britain's workforce.
They arrived underneath the Eurostar train, which reaches speeds of 300km as it heads from the continent to London.
- Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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