Grossbritannien, Irland und Schweden zeigen,
dass freizügige Immigration und flexible Arbeitsmärkte einen Beitrag
zum wirtschaftlichen Wachstum leisten können und nicht, wie so häufig
befürchtet, zur Verdrängung von einheimischen Arbeitskräften und
sozialen Spannungen führen müssen.
Frankreich und auch
Deutschland können hier einiges lernen:
It turns out the doomsayers were partly right: Nearly a year and a half
after the expansion of the European Union, floods of East Europeans
have washed into Britain.
Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at
an average rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain's decision to
allow unlimited access to the citizens of the eight East European
countries that joined the EU last year.
They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as
waitresses, builders, and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of
London into Slavic and Baltic enclaves where pickles and Polish beer
are stacked in delicatessens and Polish can be heard on the streets
almost as often as English.
But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has
absorbed these workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom
at 4.7 percent, and economic growth continues apace.
Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have
registered to work in Britain, many more than the government expected,
in what is shaping up to be one of the great migrations of recent
decades.
Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields like nursing and construction.
"They are coming in and making a very good reputation as highly
skilled, highly motivated workers," said Christopher Thompson, a
diplomat at the British Embassy in Warsaw. "The U.K. is pleased with
the way it's progressed over the first 16 months, and we're confident
it will be a beneficial relationship for both sides in the future."
Tens of thousands of East Europeans have also moved to Ireland
and Sweden, the only other West European countries that opened their
labor markets to the new EU members.
With nearly full employment, Ireland's booming economy still
needs workers, and immigration is actively encouraged. More than
128,000 East Europeans from the new EU member states registered to work
in Ireland from May 2004 to August this year.
Irish society seems to be adjusting to the newcomers, 45,000 of whom
come from Poland. A newspaper in Limerick now runs a column in Polish;
last summer the national bus company began a daily service from Dublin
to Warsaw.
The phenomenon is more subdued in Sweden, where about 16,000
workers from the new EU countries registered with the authorities
between May 2004 and early October this year. A substantial majority,
about two thirds, were Poles, followed by Lithuanians and Estonians.
Fearing a massive influx of East Europeans after enlargement, other
West European countries threw up barriers that will be lowered only
gradually over the next decade. A Pole seeking to work in France, for
example, still needs to apply for a work permit. France issued 737 such
permits to Poles in the 10 months after enlargement; that is the number
of Poles who arrive in Britain every two days.
Poles who go to Britain, in contrast, do not need any special permission.
In fact, Britain is so eager to recruit more Poles, by far the
largest group of entrants since May last year, that British embassy
officials in Warsaw have distributed brochures at Polish unemployment
offices "so that if people wanted to go to the United Kingdom they had
good information," Thompson said.
