Europe
and Japan have to
re-think immigration
By
Jonathan
Power
February 25, 2004
LUND, SWEDEN - Immigration, we are belatedly
beginning to realize, has enabled western industrial
societies to put on hold problems it should have been
forced to confront earlier. In particular it has
postponed the re-organization of economic life in the
most humdrum parts of the economy, putting off the day
when menial jobs would have to be reshaped to attract
unemployed locals. It has also delayed the day when a lot
of businesses should have packed up thirty years ago and
relocated in lower cost, emigrant-producing countries.
And it has postponed a re-think of our antiquated
attitudes to older workers.
Even in America, which for now accepts, if not always
as uniformly as it once used to, that it will continue to
be a country whose vitality partly comes from immigration
and where the process of social adopting and adapting is
more smooth than in Europe and Japan, economists find it
hard to prove that latter day immigration has been a
significant economic plus. One could say the present
consensus among many American economists is that
immigration is good for certain industries, a useful
anti-inflation tool in the short run, usually good for
the majority of first generation immigrants themselves,
but not for low paid natives. (In California
American-born workers have left the state as fast as
immigrants have moved in, so extreme has been the impact
of immigrants in keeping wages down.)
It actually doesn't matter if the U.S. population is
growing faster and is younger. The critical issue for
Europe and Japan is how they use their work force- can
they use their older people effectively and productively?
Can they avoid throwing people on the scrap heap in their
50s, as is common in such jobs as banking and train
driving, in marked contrast to say judges who often go on
until they are 75 which, unless you believe the law is an
easy profession, goes to show how much it is all simply a
question of attitude?
Konrad Schuller, writing in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine, has made the point that an older population
is wiser and less violent. Older people score
highest in solving society's problems, whether it be
related to jobs, marriage or teenage growing pains. In
Holland recruiting the older workers into new jobs has
become a growth industry. In Rotterdam "55+", an
employment agency, has seen demand soar for health-care
workers, teachers and librarians. And who these days at
70 or even 75 cannot drive a bus or sell tickets in a
railroad station?
Old categories no longer hold good when longevity is
expanding by 1% annually, not by 0.75% as forecast only
two years ago (this is from a recent report by the UK's
government's actuary) and a French child born today has a
50% chance of reaching 100, and in far, far, better
health than the centenarians of today. Governments
need to give society some fiscal shock treatment, like
sharply cutting taxes for the working elderly or doubling
the normal state pension if one waits to retire until the
age of 70 or 75.
Sweden- the country with highest longevity in the
European Union- has been the first to reform its state
pension system to reflect these trends. Now employees
have a right to remain in work until 67, two years longer
than before and it has become almost impossible with a
state pension to support oneself if one retires at 61.
Still, a government investigator shocked many when he
said that due to demographic changes it is probable that
before long Swedish employees will have to work until
they are 79.
This is to exaggerate. Whilst it is true that birth
rates have fallen all over Europe and Japan, there is
evidence accumulating that this is bottoming out. In
Sweden, the mother of not only the sexual revolution but
of the working mother and the government-funded
crèche, there are signs already of a reverse (and
in Denmark and Finland too). In Britain and France the
decline in population is happening more slowly. Moreover,
there is evidence that as the divorce rate continues to
climb, still fertile women who take another partner
sometimes start a second family. Again, reducing the tax
burden on young couples who have bigger families, making
up the lost revenue with the tax from people who remain
in the work force for much longer, could give the
birthrate a useful boost.
On present trends, unless nothing is done a country
like Germany would need to take in 3.4 million immigrants
annually for the next 50 years. The sooner governments
wake up to the impossibility of this, given the
understandable reticence of their peoples not to loose
their cultural identity and their clear inability to deal
positively with the alienation of many second generation
immigrants, the more likely that reforms can take hold.
The great immigration debate has to become the great
re-structuring debate.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
 
|