EU takes a hard line on immigration

INTERIOR MINISTERS from European Union (EU) member states gave initial approval to a new immigration policy July 7 that will, according to Andreu Missé writing in the Spanish daily El País, "harden" European immigration policy for the continent's estimated 8 million undocumented workers.

The new policy, authored by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is currently head of the rotating presidency of the EU, will be based on the "labor needs" of European countries, and goes by the euphemistic title "select immigration." The final decision on the policy will take place in October, when it must be approved by individual European governments.

Germany and Spain joined with France in championing the new immigration rules, which will "reinforce border controls," and "assure the return to their country of origin" for all immigrants without papers, according to the measure.

If this new policy is approved, it will put into place many of the most right-wing aspects of U.S. immigration policy that have given rise to the immigrants rights movement here.

For instance, immigrants will be required to learn the language of the country in which they reside, or face legal consequences. The policy would also make family reunification on conditional on factors such as "the capacity of the governments" or the "immigrant family's resources and ability to integrate itself" into its new country. More ominously, the pact calls for "putting the accent on respect for the identities of the member states."

These policies will allow anti-immigrant politicians to target immigrant groups that "don't fit in." So it comes as no surprise that the right-wing Sarkozy is leading this campaign.

However, Spain's support is more surprising. Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was reelected on March 9 of this year at the head of the Socialist Party ticket. During his first term, Zapatero pushed for and won an amnesty for the roughly 1 million undocumented workers living in Spain, leading to strong criticism from anti-immigrant politicians within the country and abroad.

During the negotiations over the new policy, Spain did press for and won the elimination of so-called "integration contracts" that Sarkozy wanted immigrants to sign as a condition of residency. A proposed prohibition on the right of member states to enact blanket amnesties was also stripped out of the pact.

However, by supporting the new policy overall, Zapatero is giving aid and comfort to the anti-immigrant hysteria that is sweeping other European countries and is gathering steam in Spain itself.

As El Pais argued in a critical editorial, not only has the new policy elicited uneasy responses from Latin American leaders, "but it is the global image of the European Union that is being affected. Depending on the development of this pact, which was proposed by Sarkozy and supported by Spain, that image still has room to get worse."