Differences in the Asylum Policies of European Countries - Essay Example

Migration Policies (Asylum) 21 October Introduction The ability to move freely around is one of mans most cherished rights. This freedom of movement is guaranteed by most countries in their constitutions but however is limited to their own citizens. Differences in the asylum policies of European countries can be attributed to two distinctive methods of policy formulation: an active involvement of all the community institutions (community approach) or direct consultations between member-states of the EU (Guild, 1996:3). In context, reasons of why people migrate in the first place are: employment and political reasons. In addition, differences in their asylum policies are due to nationalism, economic considerations and cultural issues of the host country. Many interrelated issues now surround immigration and asylum policies of countries in Europe. Economic, political, cultural and security issues now accompany the public and political discussions about immigration especially in light of the slowdown in the economies of most European countries. The first asylum policies were formulated in response to a legal international dilemma of denial of State Protection and later on recognized the personal and religious reasons for flight (Kneebone & Rawlings-Sanaei, 2007:4) and on how far should a country help other human beings for humanitarian reasons (Oberman, 2010:1). There is a great need to find the right balance between humanitarian issues as against limited and dwindling resources of the host country. Government policies are based on strict criteria separating phoney asylum seekers from legitimate ones who are economic migrants from forced migrants. This paper discusses some of the reasons for the differences in policies of European countries Germany, France and England with regards to grant of asylum. Discussion This paper looks at the immigration policies in relation to the grant of asylum of three European countries. However, there is a growing trend of backlash against immigrants who abused the lenient policies of some European countries. In addition, growing concerns about other issues have forced these European countries to get an honest-to-goodness re-evaluation of their asylum policies in response to recent events. This paper hopes to illuminate and add to the discussions in a meaningful way. Indirectly, the three countries’ immigration policies are also compared to that of the United States of America. Nationalism – Germany is mostly a homogenous country among the nations in Europe and as such has closely guarded this close-knit social and cultural structure. In this regard, its citizens have never considered themselves to be an immigrant nation like what the United States of America is to most of its citizens. In earlier decades, the asylum policies of Germany were shaped mostly by the two world wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s (Hegen, 2010:1). It accepted and gave more priority to asylum seekers who are able to prove their German ancestry. These ethnic Germans mostly came from Russia and the other East European countries with significant German populations like Poland and Romania. This means its asylum policies were based more on nationalistic rather than humanitarian grounds. German nationalism is expressed in many ways and they want to preserve everything German in their way of life. This sense of national pride is primarily in their insistence that all immigrants and asylum seekers wishing to stay in Germany learn the language and accept the customs and traditions as well (Demsey, 2010:1). The key word for them is integration which means all those who seek residence in the country must not only obey all the German laws but become German in the real sense of the word of what it means to be a German citizen. People in Germany want everyone to be like them in order to preserve their homogeneity. Migrants who want to stay in Germany preferably should also adopt its Christian Protestant values. Great Britain, on the other hand, has a much longer history in terms of migration. This experience goes back to the Celts and the Gauls who invaded the country and then subsequent to that the Romans who also entered the isles in the later centuries. England has a more varied experience with regards to the presence of peoples from other climes and cultures. Its asylum policies are based more on the principle of multiculturalism than on the German version of integration. The English people are aware of the advantages of having several cultures that in turn can enrich English culture in general such as drinking tea or using herbs and spices. Britain is more attuned to cultural pluralism because of a long history of successive waves of immigration such as the Anglo-Saxons and Normans which invaded the country in the early centuries. England had also seen waves of different ethnic groups such as the Irish during the crash of the potato crop in Ireland and the resulting famines (Hadjetian, 2008:10). The country has also been exposed to waves of immigrants from its colonies, Britain being a country with a long history of colonialism and being a colonial power for quite some time. It is a long tradition in the country to welcome and accept people from its far-flung colonies. A period of peace known as Pax Britannica saw the country accept great numbers of immigrants who wish to settle in England and experience firsthand what it takes to live in mother country. The country allows entry to people coming from its colonies such as in Africa (more so from South Africa), the Americas (the USA and Canada), from South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), Asia (Hong Kong, Burma, Australia and New Zealand), and from the Mediterranean (Jamaica) such that Great Britain acquired a truly cosmopolitan outlook. London, as the centre of the empire, is the seat of colonial power and the trade in its commodities from the colonies and the export of manufactured goods during the subsequent Industrial Revolution which originated in England. The British as a people were more or less attuned and accustomed to having people around them coming from the various ethnicities, religions and races; as a result, it has developed a more tolerant attitude towards asylum. Economic Considerations – Great Britain is one of the countries most affected by the recent economic crisis. There is a sense of urgency to recent moves in the British parliament to amend its asylum policy in view of harsh economic realities. Recent compiled statistics are showing that net immigration (arrivals minus departures) quadrupled to 237,000 people in the decade between 1997 and 2007 (MigrationWatch UK, 2009:1). Some 3 million people arrived in the U.K. since 1997 and more are arriving each day, putting a strain on the governments finances and its ability to cope with a surge in population. Already, the United Kingdom is the second most-populous country in Europe after the Netherlands in terms of population density. The current debate in the UK was triggered by the feeling the previous government in a way had lost control of its borders or simply not focused enough on this sensitive issue. The three sources of immigrants in the UK and in most other European countries as well are these: economic migration (work permits plus entries issued to their dependants), family reunions such as allowing separated family members to get together and international marriages, and a third factor which is asylum. However, within the bigger context of immigration policy, it can be considered that asylum is just a small part, comprising only approximately 24,000 annually or about 10% of the total net foreign immigration (ibid.) in the United Kingdom. Much of the UK debate on asylum is focused on asylum applicants who got rejected in their applications but were not deported. In other words, the pool of these asylum seekers got bigger each year as many of them were not tracked anymore and continued their illegal stay. The generous provisions of asylum policy were largely a result of Western liberalism but this worried the Western European countries due to cost considerations (Boswell et al., 2003:14). The current asylum discussion in the UK is largely on economic grounds because it puts strain on government finances, public services, housing, environment, benefits and quality of life. Its asylum policies differed from Germany’s in terms of the impact by the migrants on the nation’s economy; Britain is implementing budget cuts due to record deficits (Reuters, 2010). On the other hand, German immigration policy is based mostly on its need for foreign workers to augment its own labour force during times of tight labour markets exemplified by its guest worker programs (Gastarbeiter). The labour migrants during the period 1950-1970 are in its third generation already composed mostly of Turks, Yugoslavs, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Spanish and Portuguese descendants. The recent changes in German asylum policy concerned mainly with its tighter asylum policies and stricter enforcement of deportation procedures for those found to be ineligible for asylum. In particular, it recognized the denial of refugee status to a person who came from “safe third countries” due to perceived abuses (Hegen, 2010:1). Germany can be considered as a socialist state with its generous welfare programs which become a magnet for all types of immigrants, both legal and illegal. Germans feel their welfare system is being sponged off and yet migrants refuse to integrate into the German society by retaining their religious, ethnic and racial practices or traditions. But lately it has been influenced by three factors namely demographics (ageing of the population and a shortage of qualified workers and technical personnel), its integration with the European Union and the EUs renewed endeavour to harmonize all the immigration and asylum policies of all member countries. Germany has more than 7 million foreign nationals (9% of the population) with 20% coming from a member-state of the European Union (Adler & Gielen, 2003:165). The saving factor for Germany is its strong economy. Asylum policy in Germany and the public discourse about it is shaped in part by views of how it reflects on the self-image of the German host country (Bosswick, 2000:45). German people are very conscious about how they treat refugees but like the other European countries have to strike a balance between humanitarian grounds and their own national interests. Both Germany and England are signatories to significant treaties like the 1990 Dublin Convention but Germany now wants some amendments to the Geneva Convention to prevent the abuses it sees from immigrants who avail of generous German benefits like unemployment benefits, the income protection programs and its social maintenance policies (Schuster, 2003:9). However, Germany has lately liberalized its asylum policies by allowing asylum seekers to work twelve months after entry provided no qualified German citizen is willing to take the job. Unlike the other European countries, Germany is not badly affected by the recession. In fact, its export industries never had a better year. Its export sector is buoyed by very strong demand from China and the resurgent economies of Central and Eastern Europe (the former countries of the Soviet Union). Germany is indeed in dire need of qualified labour, actually in the vicinity of 400,000 engineers and technical-skilled workers. Its strong economy welcomes these types of people who the Germans see as more productive and contribute more to their economic growth. Right now, the labour shortage is knocking off one percent of its projected economic growth (Kauffmann, 2010:1). Qualified guest workers are most welcome. Culture – unlike Germany or Great Britain, country of France has an emotive issue. France has placed greater emphasis on gender in asylum issues because it saw that women immigrants are placed in a double jeopardy situation due to both racist and sexist threats (Freedman, 2004:105). The asylum policies in France are supposedly gender-neutral but the country has seen a larger proportion of women among asylum seekers. Some experts call this as the “feminization of migration” in which more women enter France supposedly for family reunification but there are other motives for seeking asylum, but mainly the feminization of poverty in their native homes or countries of origin due to cultural and gender biases. France is facing a unique situation among European countries and that is the presence of a significant minority of seekers for group asylum such as Gypsies, Kurds, Bosnians and Croatians (Muus, 1997:118). Additionally, it is now facing harsh criticisms from its neighbour countries for implementing its so-called Roma policy (Bennhold & Castle, 2010:1). France is quietly repatriating the Roma (gypsies) to Romania, Bulgaria and other countries of origin but faces a possible sanction from the European Commission for breaking humanitarian laws. France has a different view towards immigrants and asylum seekers in that it believes these groups of people or anybody of foreign origin are essentially not assimilable. This is the position advocated officially by the right-wing political party of Front National although still it continues to claim it is neither xenophobic nor racist; what it wants is to protect the French culture from the dangers of unabated immigration. Their main argument is cultural differences are too much for ethnic groups to be successfully integrated into French society. On the other hand, France today faces a growing number of Muslim immigrants as well and is challenged by the difficulties in how to deal with the Muslim female tradition of wearing head scarves; it sees it as preventing meaningful social discourse when a persons face is covered at all times (Pelissier, 2010:1) and is viewed as a form of female oppression. Conclusion The three European countries of Germany, France and the United Kingdom adhere to the basic principles of humanitarianism as enshrined in the various international treaties they had signed. In particular, they respect the concept originating from the French which is idea of non-refoulement (a forced repatriation or involuntary return to the original state) of refugees. However, there are some differences between these three states such as the length of detention for illegals caught (12 days in France, 30 days in Germany and unlimited time in the U.K.), the criteria for the grant of asylum by examining asylum applications based from the country of origin (whether there are human rights violations) or whether allowing asylum seekers to work temporarily (not allowed to work in France but allowed in Germany after 12 months on entry and within 6 months in the U.K. (Marie, 2004:43). Asylum policies in Germany are due more to labour demand and demographics, in the United Kingdom on economic grounds and in France on its cultural concerns. America still continues to accept most asylum seekers as the ultimate bastion of freedom and democracy but is also under increasing strain due to the many illegal immigrants across its borders who are mostly Latinos. References Adler, L. L. & Gielen, U. P. 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