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Managing Europe's New Migrant Tide
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19626 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
2,389 Words |
| Author
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Kimberley A. Hamilton and Kate Holder
Kimberly A. Hamilton is research associate in African studies
and Kate Holder is deputy director of European Studies at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
D.C. |
The plight of thousands of migrants fleeing Eastern Europe and North Africa made news throughout Western Europe last summer, while Western governments debated the destiny of the new arrivals. The outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia greatly heightened fears of more mass flows of refugees. Western states proud of their postwar records as countries of asylum are now tightening restrictions on all types of border crossings as the number of migrants to Europe soared over the past two years.
In August the Italian government refused entrance to the latest wave of Albanian "boat people" in response to local government aversion to accepting any more refugees. French Prime Minister Edith Cresson threatened to deport illegal immigrants on chartered planes after a spate of immigrant riots shook French cities in July.
Germany, laden with the pressures of unification and East European reform, last year processed at least 200,000 applications for asylum and more than 100,000 so far this year, most of which await final decision, on top of the 400,000 ethnic German immigrants from the Soviet Union automatically allowed entry during 1990. Policymakers have only begun to weigh the implications of the new "Law on Exit and Entry of USSR Citizens" passed by the Supreme Soviet last May to take effect on January 1, 1993.
For a long time the United States, a self-proclaimed nation of immigrants and country of asylum, centered its refugee resettlement policy on asylum-seekers from the erstwhile East bloc, especially from the Soviet Union. But dwindling resettlement funds now threaten to undermine this process. The transatlantic cooperation that was so vital to refugee resettlement throughout the postwar era is crumbling, not only due to diminishing resources but because of reactionist and nationalist fears compounded by policy confusion over the changing nature of population movements.
While migration in and of itself does not pose a sustained or large-scale threat to international security, unbridled migration may upset carefully struck balances within particular regions. Building tighter and taller legislative walls or imposing forced repatriation has only partially deterred population movements--at high political cost--and ignores the basic causes of migration: conflict, poverty, and persecution.
The current wave of mass migrations in and around Europe, therefore, challenges Western "receiving" states to cooperate in formulating a new approach to
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