From Ryan McMaken, at mises.org:
Europe has complex immigration rules. As the EU web site shows, there are multiple layers of immigration regulations encompassing both the local national level and the EU level.
But, as the recent influx of refugees and economic migrants has shown, the EU government is able to flex its muscle in an ad hoc fashion in the service of compelling member states to accept the migrants and refugees. The “quota plan” being forwarded by the EU government would divide up migrants and refugees among the EU member states, and, of course, over time, these migrants would qualify for those member states’ taxpayer funded public benefits. In Germany, for example, officials “estimate that as many as 460,000 more people could be entitled [next year] to social benefits.”
Big Countries vs. Little Ones
The proposal could become a mandate if approved by a “qualified majority” of EU member governments, a type of majority that is weighed in favor of the larger members. Most of those larger members are in favor. If adopted, however, one doesn’t need to be exceptionally perceptive to see how mandates apposed on dissenting member states could be a source of significant division among member states, and especially, their populations.
Writing in the UK independent yesterday, John Lichfield avers:
North vs south; east vs west; Britain vs the rest; German leadership or German dominance. The refugee crisis is like a diabolical stress test devised to expose simultaneously all the moral and political fault lines of the European Union.
Germany leads to way in calling for more migrants. While part of it is no doubt Germany’s ongoing attempt to rehabilitate itself from its fascist past, there may be other considerations as well. Claire Groden in Fortune notes:
Germany has one of the world’s most rapidly aging and shrinking populations. With one of the world’s lowest birthrates, the country relies on immigration to plug a growing workforce hole. According to one expert quoted in Deutsche Welle last year, the German economy needs to attract 1.5 million skilled migrants to stabilize the state pension system as more Germans retire…According to current official estimates, every third German could be over 65 by 2060, leaving two workers to support each retiree.
Indeed, demographic issues such as these are surely part of the calculus for member states.The German government has likely weighted the benefits of new young workers against the possibility against the cost of those 460,000 new residents. But for other countries less desperate to save an overextended public pension system, they see mostly costs when it comes to more migrants and refugees.There is a real divide here between Western Europe (especially Germany and Italy) and Eastern Europe (especially Poland and Slovakia) in terms of the percentage of the population that is over 65.
But the divide between different member states, as described by Lichfield, surely goes well beyond this. There are issues of relative wealth to deal with as well. The Germans are rich compared to the Poles, for example, who have already announced they will take refugees but no economic migrants.
To continue reading: Immigration Will Divide Europe Against Itself
