Author Archives: P O Neill

About P O Neill

is Irish and lives in America.

The Paradox of Selective Immigration Policy

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The paradox is that countries attempting to screen immigrants by skill level, so that they only get the more skilled ones, end up with an immigrant mix that is less skill-intensive than countries with open immigration.  This apparently is a consensus message from the Munich Economic Summit: countries like Ireland, the UK, and Spain, which have had major episodes of open immigration from EU accession countries and/or general amnesties for non-EU immigrants have higher proportions of highly qualified immigrants —

For example, 45% of Ireland’s foreign-born residents and 34% of Britain’s have a university degree, compared with only 19% in Germany and 11% in Italy, Mr. [Hans-Werner] Sinn said.

In global terms, the case study is the USA, which despite having various qualification and skill weightings in its immigration system, has fewer such restrictions than other magnet destinations (e.g. Canada) and is still a brain-drain recipient country.  So what’s at work?  Is it that countries more likely to choose relatively liberal immigration policies are also more likely to have the policies that attract skilled immigrants?  That low and high skilled immigrants are complements; you can’t have one without the other?  Or that when you have a relatively open policy, you don’t alienate the source country by seeming want to cherry-pick only their “best” people?  

One interesting thing about the EU is that there is enough variation in national policy to learn from this episodes.  Willingness to learn is another question.

Sarko tilts at the trente-cinq

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It’s tough to pin Nicolas Sarkozy down. He had spent the last week in apparent populist mode, hence his proposal for a redistribution of the VAT windfall on fuel taxes, and working on a plan to use France’s EU presidency to drive a clampdown on immigration to the EU. Yet he has added to this a proposal to open the door to the iconic Polish Plumber and now he has set up what looks like a straight conflict with the unions over the 35 hours. The odd thing is that one week ago he seemed content to work around the edges of the 35 hour week: endorsing what seemed like a rebuke by his labour minister to a call from Patrick Devedjian (UMP leader) to get rid of it. But the actual draft legislation seems to keep the 35 hour week only in a nominal sense while allowing so much variation above it that it would be seriously eroded. Perhaps a gambit that he can split “the France that wakes up early” from those with enough income to have a meaningful labour-leisure tradeoff. Coupled with a calculation that he can wear out the opposition over the July and August vacances. But not much sign of chastened Gordon Brown style U-turns.

Sarko the Euro-populist

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In what is no doubt part of his resurrection bid, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed a  vague-sounding cap on VAT/TVA as applied to fuel.  He has a point.  VAT is an accelerator of underlying price increases, since the amount applies as a percentage of the net price and not is a fixed monetary amount (like fuel duty).  Thus any increase in the net fuel price gets 21% (in Ireland, for example) added on to it.    On the other hand, he’s also dragging in the EU, since the commission would have to approve a modification of VAT as applied to fuel.  So pending that, all he has is a proposal to “redistribute” the VAT windfall as selective subsidies or transfers.  One wonders to what extent such proposals will generate “me too” proposals in other countries — especially in the UK, where Gordon Brown will surely balk at yet another revenue drain as he deals with a summer of discontent. 

Who participates in peace deals?

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When a long running conflict is finally brought to “closure”, is the deal only an arrangement between elites on each side?  The question is prompted by the Northern Ireland peace process, where great progress in reducing violence and devolving powers has not been matched by more harmonious relations at the community level.  And apparent puzzlement among many as to why Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley can seem to get along so well after being so implacably opposed.  Was it just about personal power all along?  

Likewise, we could look at the Balkans and see a problem that in sense of war has been “solved” and yet wonder whether the people in BiH and Serbia are any more reconciled to the apparent implications of the peace deals for their countries.  But most of all, we could look at Israel-Palestine and see clear evidence of Tony Blair’s famous bicycle metaphor at work (“you have to keep going forward or else you fall over”) — meaning endless photo-ops between Olmert, Abbas, Bush, and the regional heads of state and assurances from Condi Rice that lots of negotiating work is being done behind the scenes.  But is there any evidence that the Arab people are more reconciled to a long-term deal that would almost certainly see no right of return for Palestinians?  Indeed, this is one of the paradoxes of Bush’s push for democracy in the Middle East — he’ll need exactly the power of authoritarian Arab leaders to ensure acceptance of any peace deal that will almost certainly be a bitter pill for their populaces.

Perhaps AFOE readers have good examples were conflict resolution was truly a bottom-up process.  But it’s not easy to think of one.

Plague of pollsters

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Here’s an interesting analysis of the political situation in Serbia from the FT’s Quentin Peel.  This is in the context of what had looked like a good result for the Boris Tadic (president) alliance with their 38% vote share — but with a rival alliance of Radicals, Socialists (former Milosevic) and a group linked to Vojislav Kostunica (PM) inching close to a coalition.  Peel looks specifically at the EU decision to offer an Association agreement to Serbia during the campaign — a transparently political gambit.  It seems that the deal was clinched by evidence from US pollsters —

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Forced rebalancing

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It’s not clear that there’s much useful to be blogged about from a distance on the catastrophes in China and Burma.   But one difference from the past is that the population scale of Asia relative to the rest of the world is now matched by its economic influence.  In past decades, 6 figure death tolls were something one would read about and try to grasp the misery, but never see any impact on people not directly affected.  Not now.  Even isolated and shunned Burma is an important player in the world rice market but that pales in comparison to China.  One aspect of the Chinese disaster is highlighted by a dreadfully timed report from the US Treasury on its exchange rate policy.

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Soft power in Belgium

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In the latest twist in the long-running saga of the increasingly Francophone areas near Brussels but in Flanders, a Council of Europe delegation visited three towns where the election of Francophone mayors has not been endorsed by the regional Flemish government.  The delegation sounded pessimistic and floated the possibility that the case could be subject to a Council “monitoring procedure” — albeit one that falls far short of what an EU monitoring procedure (e.g. for Eurozone deficit targets) looks like.   The Council, with 47 member countries, has no enforcement power.  But its Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is extremely active, perhaps indicative of the fact that Europe’s various national and linguistic flashpoints result not in wars but in bitter local disputes (see also this New York Times article about Liedekerke).  Among the ironies of the Council delegation’s visit to Belgium was the presence of a Serbian member, who was probably relieved to see things don’t look likely to result in a war.  But the situation looks set to drag on and on.

Serbian election: EU signals worked?

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To the extent that the EU was able to cobble together a single position on the Serbian election, it was clear that they wanted President Boris Tadic’s Coalition for a European Serbia to do well — hence the offers of an Association agreement during the election campaign and the introduction of fee-free visa travel last week. Apparently the gambit worked —

Independent monitors said Tadic’s coalition had about 38 percent of the vote with about 50 percent of the vote counted nationwide. They said the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party was running a distant second with 28 percent.

While the possibility remains that a more nationalist and EU-phobic coalition could assemble against the Tadic group, the 38 percent showing gets them very close on their own. The challenge of not being perceived as “weak” on Kosovo will remain.  There is nothing in the news accounts so far referring to any attempt to administer voting in Kosovo, which would have been a flashpoint in diplomatic relations had it happened.

Discordant note

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In what seems like incredible clumsiness on someone’s part, the Culloden hotel (outside Belfast) got a request from Northern Ireland’s regional development agency which was interpreted as calling for the hotel’s minority staff to keep a low profile during meetings of a big foreign investment conference later this week —

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