Re: One of 3 countries only allowing East European citizens of the new EU countries to migrate freely and work in their economies. The other 2 being UK and Sweden.
It's more complicated than that... First, all the new members that joined the EU May 1st, 2004 had to wait until 2007 for their workforce to be freely moving and employed across all the EU. But even so, workers from poland, Hungary, Romania,... have been working on the sly in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Germany,... ever since the early 1990s (following the fall of the Iron Wall). I remember that, already in the early 1990s, Polish workers in Belgium were estimated to amount to about 15,000... And today, even though Poles are not allowed yet to work in Belgium, it's become quite common to see cars with Polish license plates everywhere --they're not all tourists! Besides, there are over 100,000 Ukrainians working illegally in Spain and another 100,000 of them working in Portugal(*), the latter under a legal agreement between Lisbon and Kiev... Now, that's interesting, isn't it? Ukraine is not even slated for the next EU enlargement (Bulgaria, Romania,...) and will perhaps never be a EU member!! And talking of Spain and Portugal, because of the latter's special relationship with Latin America, it's now customary for labor inspectors to arrest illegal workers from Brazil when touring and inspecting construction sites....
Actually, your claim about Ireland, the UK and Sweden applies more accurately to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all of which being far more open to UK, Irish, and North European immigrants than to Frenchmen, Spaniards and other "pseudo-white" wannabes. Ireland's workforce of skilled and graduate workers was dramatically depleted by the latter's easy emigration to North America and Australia. Add to that the fact that English is the most common second language for Eastern European graduate/skilled workers and the match is obvious... University graduates and skilled technicians from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Hungary, etc. coming to Ireland don't find themselves in competition with Irish jobseekers --the latter have already moved on abroad. That's not the case in France, Italy or Germany: PhD postgraduates fluent in five languages are stuck there --especially if they're immigrant "overachievers"....
Gus
(*) In 2002, Spain removed 74,467 foreigners, including 23,381 Moroccans and 18,865 Romanians. Spanish police intercepted 1,000 boats and arrested 16,504 people in 2002.
In January 2003, Spain approved a new law that allows Spanish women to claim citizenship for children over 21 years old born out of Spain, and allows foreigners with Spanish relatives to apply to live in Spain without having a work visa. As a result, over a million foreigners, primarily in Latin America, are expected to apply to migrate to Spain, including 400,000 from Argentina. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo warned that "It is impossible to take lightly a measure that could increase the population of Spain by 2.5 percent."
Spain has labor recruitment agreements with Romania, Poland, Ecuador, Morocco and Bulgaria in 2004. There are three categories of foreign workers: those with contracts for a year or more, seasonal workers with contracts for less than nine months work in Spain, and young people ages 18-35 who can be employed in Spain up to 18 months. The agreements are reciprocal, and permit Spaniards to work in these countries on the same basis. The foreign workers participate in Spanish social security and health systems on the same basis as domestic workers.
Portugal. President Jorge Sampaio said Portugal must do more to integrate migrants: "We were also a nation that sent immigrants abroad and we have a duty not to forget the battle and effort many Portuguese went through during the period of emigration." There are 400,000 foreigners legally in Portugal, and perhaps another 100,000 illegals in the country of 10 million.
Some five million Portuguese live abroad, including one million each in the US and Brazil and 800,000 in France.
There are an estimated five million Ukrainians employed abroad, chiefly in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Ukrainians moved to Portugal in part because some of them learned Portuguese fighting anti-colonial wars in Africa; Portugal and Ukraine in February 2003 signed an agreement that will allow some of the estimated 200,000 unauthorized Ukrainians to become legal seasonal workers.
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migrationint.com.au |
