Tag Archives: migragtion

Balkenende government falls over Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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It seems that this morning Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende is visiting the Queen to signal the resignation of the cabinet. The smallest of the three parties in the centre-right government, D66 with six seats, has signaled that it would not continue to support the coalition if Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk retains her portfolio. The cabinet refused, so now they have to resign.

The main coalition partners, the CDA and the VVD (Christian Democrats and Liberals), blame D66 for taking umbrage at a minister who was just doing her job. D66 complains that it did not intend to force a crisis on the government, it just wanted Verdonk to resign.

At the centre of this is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ms Verdonk is something of a controversial character in her own right, but her handling of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s immigration status appears to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. According to Trouw, Ayaan Hirsi Ali finds it “sad” that the cabinet fell over her immigration status.

It’s not clear whether there will be an election forthwith. It seems that Balkenende may be able to form a minority government with just the two main coalition partners, although the lifespan of such a government might be short. Otherwise, Dutch law calls for elections within three months. Polls suggest the centre-right parties do not have the support to come back into government, but it’s close enough that the election campaign might make a difference.

Update: Guy has a much more extensive post on the subject at A Few Euros More, which I didn’t see when I posted this.

Xenophobia and human nature

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There has been some cricket chirping on AFOE the past few days, so allow me to make a little bit of noise here and chase them away.

Amnesty International has a new report out, called Russian Federation – Violent racism out of control. I shall quote part of the report below the fold and ask some questions to our readers.
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Migration And Reform

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Well today is obviously immigration day, as thousands of Latinos take to the streets in the United States to demand some kind of ‘regularisation’. I have been posting on Demography Matters about the changing pattern of Latino migration in the US, and on the not entirely unrelated topic of whether it is the arrival of the Latinos or the presence of religious belief which is primarily responsible for the fact that US fertility is still hovering round the replacement mark (especially the comments, and here, and here and here).

But this post is not about migration in the United States. Rather it is about migration inside the frontiers of the EU itself. As populations age, and our economies come under increasing strain, some societies will prove more able to reform than others. Now one conjecture I have been making is that in this process some societies will attract population (and get that famous win-win dynamic going) while others will lose even that which they have (sounds a bit like the biblical parable now doesn’t it). Actually economists have terms for all this. You might say that the ones who attract are experiencing an increasing returns process, while those who lose are suffering from negative feedback.

Claus has already touched on how Denmark is suffering from a lack of immigration (and me here), in the sense that more people are now leaving than are arriving, but perhaps more importantly for the future of the entire EU, Germany is very near to becoming a net exporter of people (and here).

Pperhaps a bit more spice was added to this already simmering cooking-pot last week by a sudden, and rather unexpected, bout of finger pointing from Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, in the general direction of Vienna. Now according to Steinbrück, Vienna’s recent decision to cut corporate tax rates from 34 per cent to 25 per cent has led to an increasing number of German companies investing across the border in Austria. In other words, not only are people leaving, companies are now also leaving, and to less than anticipated destinations, and of course, on the backs of the companies will go even more people. Are we really so sure that that recently heralded sustainable recovery is as sustainable as some are suggesting? Morgan Stanley’s Eric Chaney understandably still has his doubts.

The real issue is this: as the FT says “Mr Steinbrück has limited room for manoeuvre in the tax field because of Germany’s high budget deficit”. All these issues interlock. So, on a day when Jaques Chirac seems to have taken a step backwards in the French reform process, it might be just worth asking ourselves whether, at the end of the day, there won’t be a price to pay for all this ‘no rush now is there’ style delay.

Who is my neighbour?

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Who was the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany? Diagramme his family tree (paternal and maternal) back to the 14th century.

Germans have been shocked lately to discover that a lot of their schools suck.

The schools in question are typically Hauptschulen, the lowest in the tripartite German division of secondary schools (the others are the Realschulen and the Gymnasien.) Traditionally, the Hauptschule was designed to ensure a basic education while providing vocational training and facilitating its pupils’ entry into an apprenticeship. Not all that long ago, people in other countries looked upon Germany’s programme of vocational education with considerable envy.

Things fall apart, alas, and the centre cannot hold. These days many German firms can select their apprentices from out of the ‘higher-class’ Realschulen, and many inner-city Hauptschulen have become mere dumping-grounds. Worse, they are all (or are all perceived at this moment by the populace to be) festering hotbeds of nigh-American levels of intra-schoolchild violence, though there might be rather fewer firearms in the schoolrooms.

But what has really grabbed the Germans by the collar about this issue is that it is not really about schools. Rather, it is about the very serious question of what it means to be a German. Or, as all too many Germans see it, it is about the strangers among us.

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Hot Labour Anyone?

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This post has one sovereign virtue: apart from in the current sentence it will not refer, either directly or indirectly, to the Catalan Statute. The topic it does deal with however is probably equally vital for the future of Spain. The issue is Spain’s housing boom, and the role of immigration in fuelling it. Two facts above all others stand out: Spain is currently ‘enjoying’ the longest and deepest housing boom (in the current round) among all the world’s developed economies (see this useful article from the Economist, or this one from Business Week), and Spain is also enjoying sustained rates of immigration which – at around 2% of the population per annum, may well be the most intense ever experienced in a developed economy. For purposes of comparison I could point out that Spain’s net migration rate of 17.6 per thousand in 2003 contrasts sharply with that recorded for the old European Union 15 for the same year – 5.4 per thousand – and is even well above the level recorded by Germany in the early 1990s – a maximum of 9.6 per thousand in 1992 – or by France in the early 1970s. So there is a housing boom, and there is immigration, the question is, what is the connection?
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Spain’s Immigration

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As Spanish commenter Pepe would probably say, ‘hot labour’ is moving into Spain at a nifty clip: 2% of the total population per annum. In 2004 the number increased by 700,000. Last year, although we don’t have the numbers yet there was probably the same number or more. Here is a story from El Pais which was linked-to in the IHT based on this press release (in Spanish). Note that these numbers are for 1 January 2005, we still have to add 2006.

The number of immigrants in Spain rose last year to the equivalent of 8.5 percent of the total population as of January 1, 2005, according to figures released on Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Of the total 44.1 million people registered as residents, 3.7 million were non-Spanish. The total population rose 2.1 percent from the year-earlier figure, while the number of immigrants rose 23 percent from the figures released on January 1, 2004.

The regions that registered the largest rise in population were Catalonia, Andalusia, Madrid and Valencia, largely due to immigration. Only in the North African enclave of Melilla did the population decrease, the INE said.

The largest immigrant group hails from Ecuador with 475,698 residents, followed by Morocco with 420,556, Colombia with 248,894, Romania with 207,960 and Britain with 174,810.

For towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants, Rojales in Alicante boasts the largest percentage of foreign-born residents. Of the total population of 13,807, 65.3 percent are immigrants, the INE said. Rojales, about 35 kilometers from Alicante, is a popular spot for British citizens to buy vacation and retirement homes.

In November, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) released a survey showing that three out of every five Spaniards responded that there are too many immigrants in Spain. Immigration also was shown to be the second-most important problem for Spaniards (40 percent) after unemployment (54.1 percent) and ahead of terrorism (25.3 percent).

Nevertheless, the same survey showed that nearly 61 percent of Spaniards feel immigrants should have the right to vote in local elections, while 53.4 percent would extend that right to national elections.

The Booming Czech Republic

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The Czech Republic is booming apparently. Both per-capita GDP and fertility are definitely on an upswing, although surprisingly perhaps, for once I am not going to try and suggest that these are connected:

The Czech republic has joined Slovenia among new member states with higher levels of wealth per capita than old member Portugal, according to European Commission statistics.

This raises interesting questions which I just touch on in this AFEM post here. (Incidentally, you can find a one-page set of economic statistics for the Czech Republic from the OECD here).

What is perhaps most interesting about the Prague Post article is the way they explicitly link the increase in preganancy to a recent reform in maternity provision (due to come into effect in April), and to the fact that the ‘postponement phenomenon‘ often leads to a spike in births as women who have postponed reach the new ‘childbearing age’.

“The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry recently launched its own reforms aimed at encouraging couples to have children. The reforms provide generous benefit packages and require companies to hold the jobs of employees on leave for up to four years, and, as of April, women will begin receiving a state subsidy of 17,500 Kč ($725) for each newborn child — more than double the current amount.”
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Go West Young Man

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My preocupations about the impact of demographic change on German society are already pretty well known. Well if Germany as a whole has a sizeable problem, the former East German Lande have a huge one. The state-owned KfW development bank project in a report out today (German only unfortunately, an English version of the press release is here) that the while the population of the old West Germany will drop by six percent between 2002 and 2050, that of the six eastern states will decline by a whopping 25%. Not to mention the fact that those who remain are likely to be even older on average than their Western counterparts. As a consequence the available workforce is likely to fall by a staggering 55%.

The issues raised by this research are large and important. Is, for example, East Germany now in irreversible decline? Can this process repeat itself elsewhere (including between rather than within nation states) as younger, more highly skilled and more mobile workers leave ageing and relatively more depressed areas etc?

The issue of migration from East to West Germany been receiving attention for some time now. Frank Heiland in a survey “Trends in East-West German Migration from 1989 to 2002” (follow the link and go to Volume 11 article 7) argues that there have been two waves of East-West migration The first one, 1989-1990, was triggered by the opportunities and uncertainties before the Reunification; the second one, since 1997, coincides with economic stagnation in the East and improving job prospects in the West.
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African Migrants ‘Dumped’ In The Desert

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The scandal of recent days surrounding the ‘policing’ of the EU’s southern frontier in Ceuta and Melilla continues. Yesterday Spanish TV was full of images and reports from a group of 500 or so Africans who were bused and dumped in the desert hundreds of kilometres from reasonable sources of food ands water. The EU observer also reports on a “technical mission” of EU officials who flew to Melilla and Ceuta over the weekend “to investigate illegal immigration patterns” and evaluate the gravity of last week’s clashes, which left a minimum of 10 migrants dead.

A commission spokesman the same day reiterated that pressure is being put on Morocco to re-admit Sub-Saharan immigrants.

But Brussels’ comment came just as Medecins sans Frontieres announced that over 500 mostly Sub-Saharan immigrants had been found “in bad shape” in the desert area of Auoina-Souatar near the Morocco-Algerian border, with the NGO claiming that they had been abandoned there by the Moroccan authorities.

Volunteers of another international NGO, SOS Racisme, said 24 immigrants, out of which many had previously applied for asylum in Spain, had died of thirst in similar circumstances.

On top of this, Javier Sancho of Medecins sans Frontieres told EUobserver that several of the immigrants had “injuries of the kind that are inflicted by sticks or hits, or by the rubber batons used by Spanish border police”.

A modest proposal for CAP reform

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I’ve been in Canada for the last month, getting in my last family visit before settling in to the serious business of either going back to school or collecting unemployment checks. My family is large – Great-Grandpa had 25 children, and Grandpa had 9 – so it takes a while if you go to see my family. Ours is a large, disorganised, occasionally frightening clan who, depending on pure whim, identifies itself as either German-Canadian, Dutch-Canadian, Russian-Canadian or Ukrainian-Canadian. Our tribal language is an obscure dialect of Low Saxon (Platt for the actual Germans out there) spoken primarily in Paraguay, Mexico, Central America and Saskatchewan, and whose most famous speaker is, arguably, Homer Simpson. It’s a long story, don’t ask. It not being much of a literary language, we all just say our ancestors spoke German – the liturgical language of my clan’s particular sect.

In contrast to Europe and the US, Canadians are a lot less disturbed about asking people about their ethnic identities or expressing some loyalty to them. I guess the main reason is that Canada has never really pretended to be a nation built atop an identity, but rather a place where an identity of sorts has slowly built up from the existence of a nation. There is no Canadian myth of the melting pot, and as our soon-to-be new Governor General has demonstrated, no serious demand for nativism in public office. Michaëlle Jean, who is slated to be the powerless and unelected Canadian head-of-state when the Queen is out of the country – e.g., practically always – when she is sworn in on the 27th, is no doubt the most attractive candidate we’ve ever had for the office. And, like her predecessor, she is a former CBC/SRC reporter and talking head.

Ms Jean and I share an endemically Canadian charateristic: We both can and do identify ourselves shamelessly as several different kinds of hyphenated Canadians. She is French Canadian, but that’s hardly strange. She is also Franco-Canadian – Ms Jean has dual citizenship with France, making her the first EU citizen to be Governor General of Canada and the first French citizen to be acting head of state of Canada since 1763. But more unprecedentedly, she is Haitian-Canadian and – as logically follows – African-Canadian.

Yes, Ms Jean is black, and furthermore in an interracial marriage. Well, that’s Canada for you. America puts black folk in squalid emergency shelters, we put ours in Rideau Hall.
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