For Americans, what is happening each night in the French channel port of Calais is poignantly and shamefully familiar. As was reported in The Times recently, clusters of poor people wait for darkness and a highrisk chance to crawl inside or beneath a truck to cross to a country that needs and welcomes their labor but refuses to legally recognize their presence.
The United States has engaged in this labor market hypocrisy for decades. Border crossers here are mainly Mexican and Central American. Western Europe’s come from North and Central Africa, the Middle East and former east bloc countries not yet in the European Union. Just about everywhere, they are distrusted by the local population and vilified by demagogic politicians.
In the rush to blame foreigners for real and imagined social ills, Europe’s anemic birth rates, aging population and hard-to-fill jobs are forgotten. Without large infusions of foreign workers, the tourist industries that many European countries depend on would be understaffed and the cost of construction would soar. None of this has stopped Europe’s politicians from stoking fears of immigrant crime, welfare burdens and foreign ways. That should also sound familiar to Americans.
Immigrant bashing pays rich political dividends and is not just confined to shameless xenophobes like Italy’s Northern League and the rising Dutch political star, Geert Wilders. It is also cynically employed by those who clearly know better, like France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Britain’s ruling Labor Party. That too, sadly, tracks the current American debate.
Without it, Mr. Sarkozy might not now be France’s president. The Northern League would not have been the biggest winner of last month’s Italian elections and a significant prop of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s new government. Rome would not have elected at the end of April its most right-wing mayor since fascism’s fall.
We do not countenance illegal immigration. Nor do we discount the anxieties of Europeans and Americans whose lives have been transformed by globalization. But the answer is not to pretend that immigrant labor isn’t needed, or that able-bodied workers from poor countries will stay at home and watch their families suffer when crossing an international border can prevent it.
The answer is for political leaders in Europe and the United States to address the issues of immigration honestly and responsibly. The first step should be realistic, enforceable laws that allow legitimate seekers of available work to emerge from the shadows into a lawful system of work permits, with a decent chance for eventual responsible citizenship.