E.U. needs foreign workers but resents their success

By Batuk Gathani

BRUSSELS, AUG 2. Last year, Germany introduced the green card employment scheme to attract skilled workers mainly from India, Eastern Europe and Russia. German officials said 8,556 people had been issued working visas so far, but this was far short of the 22,000 high- tech skilled immigrants that authorities hoped to attract annually.

Germany desperately needs high-tech foreign workers in the information technology sector to overcome severe staff shortages and labour market bottlenecks. The German IT industry association, Bitcom, recently praised Berlin's initiative. But it said there was still a need for more IT specialists. In July, eyebrows were raised when a government appointed all-party commission recommended that Germany make a major break with the past and implement a new set of radical reforms to tackle the country's long-troubled, controversial and often xenophobic approach to immigration.

Germany, after France, has the second largest population of foreign residents - about 11 per cent of the nearly 82 million population. Demographers say Germany's population may fall by 25 per cent within the next five decades if present trends are not changed. To maintain the current rate of population and economic prosperity, Germany needs to attract at least 50,000 skilled foreign workers annually. According to a recent study by the European Commission, the European Union created as many jobs as the U.S. did in 1999 but the European Union's unemployment rate at 9.2 per cent was twice as high as that of the U.S. According to E.C. officials, ``mass unemployment is still a reality in a number of region.''

Spain has an unemployment rate of nearly 16 per cent followed by Greece, France, Italy and Finland. Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Ireland and Denmark have a low unemployment rate. One interesting data is that 70 per cent of new jobs are taken by women but unemployment among women remains high. The more prosperous parts of Western Europe are ``fast greying'' with ageing populations and declining birth rates. According to demographic experts without young foreign immigrants the European population graphs would not only stagnate but go down. In Germany, for example, it is estimated that over the next two decades there may be more pensioners than workers. According to recent data issued by Sweden's statistical office, the country's population would get smaller without immigrants.

The more educated and secular members of immigrant communities are successful wealth and job creators but their success is resented by many host communities. Recent surveys of racism in E.U. countries highlight this reality. A survey on racism in the E.U. revealed that nearly a third of the E.U. citizens admit being ``quite'' or ``very'' prejudiced against foreigners. Around 50 per cent of the people in Belgium admit they are racists at heart and 22 per cent describe themselves as ``very racist''. Belgium was followed by France and Austria which rank among the three most racist countries in the E.U.

Answers to questions about racism and xenophobia also reveal the existence of extreme Right anti-immigrants parties in most racist minded countries. The most tolerant countries are Sweden, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain. In Germany, Britain and Italy four persons out of ten harbour racist sentiments. The survey was conducted among 16,000 people living in the 15 E.U. countries. The conclusion was that a third of the E.U. citizens surveyed admitted being racist to ``some extent but not systematically'' and about two thirds said they did not consider themselves racist.

The E.U. Commissioner for Social Affairs has described the findings of the survey ``quite shocking''. In Belgium, a right- wing local government council suggested not long ago that Antwerp's 40,000 North African, Arab workers should be deported to create jobs for the Belgian unemployed.

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Section  : International
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