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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (281271)	3/23/2006 4:57:49 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572773

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. [...] migrationint.com.au

To: Taro who wrote (281271)	3/23/2006 5:13:51 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572773

Follow-up to my previous post: Widely scorned, illegal workers do Europe's heavy lifting Keith B. Richburg The Washington Post Monday, August 5, 2002 'Everyone thinks this is the home of human rights. There are no right.' PARIS In the early morning hours, the construction bosses come to the smoky cafes near the Gare du Nord train station. One day they might need a half-dozen bricklayers. The next day it might be painters. The workers are gathered together and driven to the construction site, then dropped off at the end of the day. They are all foreigners, part of a broad invisible economy that exists somewhere between the illegal and the ignored. They and possibly as many as 3 million more across Europe work in restaurants, on farms and at construction sites, doing jobs that pay little but often require the kind of heavy lifting that many Europeans now shun. As many European countries put up new barriers against what is increasingly perceived as an invasion of immigrants, little thought is being given to how Europe's envied standard of living has come to depend on the manpower the illegal workers provide - or how it might fall if immigration were curtailed. "There is a lot of hypocrisy," said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration. "The jobs are there, and they basically act as a magnet. It's like a horse and carriage - you can't have one without the other." He noted that there was talk of keeping illegal workers out, but not of cracking down on people who employ illegal workers. To do that, he said, would not be "a vote-winner." The sans papiers, as those without legal immigration papers are referred to in France, come from as close as Eastern Europe and Turkey, and as far away as Central Asia and the former French colonies of West Africa. They enjoy none of the workers' rights and protections or social benefits of the state. They are paid less than the legal wage, and are often paid late, with no legal recourse. And although many have lived and worked in France for years, they have no right to vote or even complain openly about their condition. "The immigrants do all the heavy work in France, but they don't get what they deserve," said Yashar, a man in his twenties who said he came two years ago from Turkey's Black Sea coast and works in restaurants and at other odd jobs. "It's a great injustice." "They leave us here, but they don't give us papers - they exploit us," said Kahraman, a 30-year-old Turk sporting a black leather jacket in a crowded cafe thick with cigarette smoke and the scent of strong Turkish tea. "The bosses who make us work don't pay taxes." "Everyone thinks this is the home of human rights," he said. "There are no rights. There's no right to work, no right to food. I can't send money to my family. Where are the human rights?" Kamel Abichou, 37, a Tunisian, has fake papers. He works each day in catering for a total of 131 hours a month. He is sure his employers know he is here illegally, and use that knowledge to benefit. He is always paid late, he said, and two or three hours of work are regularly "forgotten." He is always asked to stay later than others. Abichou belongs to no union, and he said he never complained for fear of losing his job. There are no real figures on how many illegal immigrants live and work in France without papers, but the numbers are probably in the hundreds of thousands, and in the millions throughout Europe. Immigration experts often quote an educated guess of about 3 million migrants living and working in the 15 countries of the European Union. The only solid figure is how many people took advantage of an amnesty that five European countries offered in the 1990s; then, a total of 1.5 million illegal migrants came forward in France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. Umit Metin, the director of the Assembly of Turkish Citizens in central Paris, said he believed that there were now 300,000 illegal immigrants in France. Allowing them to stay and work at underpaid jobs, he said, "is another form of exploitation. It's another form of colonization."[] "They are helping the economy of France," he said. Besides the Turks, who often work as artisans and bricklayers on construction sites, there has been a more recent flow of illegal Chinese workers, who are employed in the clothing and textile industry.[] Germany has enacted a migration law this year that provides for the legal entry of such workers as software engineers who have highly sought-after skills. But most of the people coming to Europe have lesser skills or none at all. Their presence has prompted a popular backlash in many countries, helping to create strong gains at the ballot box for far-right, anti-immigrant political parties that blame the newcomers for rising crime and unemployment. In the Netherlands, a new government has taken power after a huge popular outpouring for the anti-immigration political maverick Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated the week before May elections. The new government that was formed after the vote is promising curbs on immigration. In Denmark as well, the government has instituted new curbs on migrants. In France, President Jacques Chirac used his Bastille Day speech on July 14 to promise to speed up the processing of asylum applications. That would be a significant change, because many foreigners who get into France from outside the EU turn themselves in to authorities and claim they were politically persecuted in their homelands. While they wait for their applications to be processed, they are allowed to live freely, but they have to support themselves. And so, lacking papers, they take jobs in the underground economy. Some migrant advocates say that legalizing the status of the sans papiers is the way to go. "A migrant who is illegal cannot integrate," said Chauzy, the spokesman for the immigration advocacy group in Geneva. "He or she is forced into the underground economy." And that, he said, is "probably the best way to fuel xenophobia and resentment against foreigners." hangoverguide.com [] Message 20232228 [**] Message 21855472