October 5, 2004
King Baudouin Foundation

Overview

On October 4-5, 2004, the European Policy Centre, the King Baudouin Foundation, and the Migration Policy Institute convened a public conference followed by an off-the-record workshop to discuss the 2005-10 agenda for EU-level cooperation in the fields of asylum, migration, integration, and frontiers.

The conference coincided with European Parliament hearings for the approval of the new European Commission members, and took place during the final weeks of preparation, led by the Dutch Presidency and the Commission, of the EU’s multi-annual programme (MAP) for Freedom, Justice, and Security. As such, it provided an opportunity for key stakeholders—from policymakers and government officials to researchers and representatives of civil society—to discuss the challenges they believe the European Union should address in the coming five years. Their ideas and insights were reported by MPI to the Dutch EU Presidency (which MPI advised throughout 2004 on its handling of immigration, integration, and asylum matters), for consideration in the final version of the MAP and in the conclusions of the European Council and JHA meetings of November and December 2004.

By mid-2004 the European Union had concluded a productive five-year work-program on asylum and migration (the Tampere Agenda), necessitated by the growing presence of migrants in European countries. Contemporary migration patterns, and particularly the stream of asylum-seeking migrants that is perceived to be out of control, have led EU member states to recognize that the processes of migration are now too significant to be left to manage themselves—they must be proactively addressed. Member States and EU institutions have thus taken small but important steps since 1999 to achieve the first elements of an EU-level “managed migration” system. The goal of this system is to define what role migration should play in society and to aim for a practical reassertion of the right to monitor and control who enters EU territory, in order to avoid policies of naïve openness, invariable restrictionism, or impulsive reactions to the latest crisis. Highlighted by the creation of a basis for the common European asylum system, progress on common migration policies (particularly in the area of illegal migration), the establishment of the EU Neighbourhood Policy, and above all the drafting of the Constitutional Treaty, substantial progress has been made.

However, much remains to be done in the coming years. Many of the goals of a comprehensive immigration policy are seemingly contradictory or at least causing tension in new combinations. An increasing focus on security with strict border controls is held to be necessary, yet the EU must also meet the challenges facing an aging European labor force that must compete in a globalized economy. Viable humanitarian asylum systems that are impermeable to abuse need to be developed, but such systems cannot be developed without an alternative legal entry system. The integration of new arrivals, documented or not, into European society is essential for stability. Yet, none of these contradictions or tensions is inevitable. Each is the product of the gap between a migration phenomenon that is complex and changing and policies that have too often been simplistic and static.

The development of an effective migration-management-based multi-annual program requires political commitments from many levels of government, from the investment of the political capital of Member States to the cooperation of constituencies on the local level. While the European Commission and the Union’s other institutions have attempted to guide the process, key stakeholders such as employers, labor force members, public institutions, and civil society members must be equally invested in its future outcomes. In convening these stakeholders, the Conference’s goal was not only to set out an agenda for EU cooperation on asylum, migration, integration, and frontiers, but also to further the exchange of ideas, knowledge, practices, and strategies for a project that is at once pan-European and profoundly national and even local in nature.

The October 4 event was a public conference designed to elevate the migration debate through a robust analytical and policy conversation among European policy analysts and government officials on key migration management topics. The summary from this first day of events can be found on the European Policy Centre website.

The second event, on October 5, was an off-the-record workshop with 30 participants, including Commission employees, Dutch Presidency representatives, civil society members, social partners, and academics. The format allowed for a more in-depth conversation on particular areas of concern to the development of a multi-year agenda. The session focused heavily on immigrant integration, in order to help generate ideas for the Dutch Presidency’s Ministerial Conference on Immigrant Integration that took place in Groningen from November 9-11 (the “Groningen Ministerial”). The remainder of the workshop focused on additional aspects of the multi-annual program, from labor migration and border controls to third-country relationships and durable solutions. These conversations are briefly described below.

KEYNOTE DISCUSSION:

The Creation of an EU Framework for Integrating Migrants

The integration of immigrants in Europe has historically been a process of passivity, characterised by the infrequent and variable use of integration programs for introductory arrivals, labor-market assimilation, and youth education, among others. The only substantial EU-level guidance for integration came at the Tampere European Council in 1999, which emphasised the need to give equitable treatment to third-country nationals legally resident in the EU.

While integration remains a national-level issue, and thus will only be included peripherally in the multi-annual program, there are a number of mechanisms currently available to the European Commission for setting integration policy, including legislation (such as discrimination directives), the Open Method of Coordination, the European Social Dialogue, and the European Social Fund, which offers financial support for integration programs. In addition, the Dutch Presidency has drafted a set of Common Basic Principles (CBPs) to guide immigrant integration policy, principles that are intended to frame the future development of integration-related instruments at all levels of governance.

The workshop aimed to gather input from civil society and experts on a number of issues, including:

• How the EU can develop integration policies, and what support (political, infrastructural, and financial) is needed;
• How the EU can eliminate obstacles to full immigrant integration;
• How the CBPs can be leveraged to impact policy; and
• How the EU can identify, analyze, and disseminate best practices related to integration, so that Member States can draw on them in order to develop their own integration programs at the local, national, and regional levels.

All participants agreed that the European Union should be involved in integration policy, though such involvement is also controversial, since it touches on a core element of national and local sovereignty (the subsidiarity principle). In a wide-ranging discussion of integration, a number of intriguing ideas were floated regarding the development of an EU-level integration policy framed by the CBP, including:

Resolving the Past before Defining the Present. Implementation of the current EU Directives on discrimination has stalled in a number of Member States without penalty; this inertia must be overcome in order to achieve a serious and viable EU-level integration policy.

Recognizing Pitfalls of EU-Level Integration. The EU must consider the practical and theoretical obstacles to integration.

• The development of integration policy, like that of all political policies, is defined by two negative parameters: 1) the compulsion to copy - because it is easier to recycle an existing policy than it is to develop an independent one, despite the socioeconomic and political factors that may necessitate the latter, and 2) the compulsion to reject - because such discussions tend for political reasons to settle around the extremes.
• In addition, integration is uniquely complicated because it is a multi-tiered (economic, civic, and social) mechanism that occurs in a two-way process (requiring acceptance both by the host country and the migrants themselves). The process of immigrant integration begins at the local level on the first day of immigrant arrival, regardless of whether the government has prepared a formal integration program. Traditional unidirectional policy concepts have limited application to issues of integration policy.
• Different generations, categories, and flows of migrants often face different integration challenges; a recently-arrived asylum seeker experiencing culture shock has very different needs from a second- or third-generation immigrant who has gained cultural acceptance but is not eligible for citizenship.

Holding Out for a Practical Program. Any EU-level integration program must be sufficiently funded and accessible for it to have any substantial or sustainable impact. In addition, the question of whether an EU-level integration program should be optional or compulsory should be carefully considered. While the program may be ineffective without a binding obligation for Member States to implement it, the EU must account for the lack of models for successful integration in the 10 new EU Member States and the proclivity of the political right to move integration efforts toward total cultural assimilation.

Associating Best Principles with Best Practices. The Common Basic Principles cannot operate in a vacuum, but must serve as a common foundation to be supplemented by promising practices and policies from Member States. Examples are currently drawn from local experiences and civil society, and are disseminated only through informal means or multilateral diplomatic efforts. A coherent and comprehensive list of best and worst programs (using external as well as EU examples), as well as a common yardstick by which to evaluate them, would be substantially more effective.

Establishing Integration Benchmarks. In addition to basic principles and best practices, a common EU policy should set flexible but defined integration benchmarks that define the processes for developing integration in society. These benchmarks should be based on direct research on the ground-level effects of such policies.

WORKSHOP DISCUSSIONS

The Multi-Annual Program: The 2005-2010 Agenda

Despite substantial achievements in establishing common asylum and migration policies within the framework of the Tampere Agenda, there are significant areas that require improvement in the coming years. The workshop discussions were designed to address specific areas of concern to the EU Multi-Annual Programme, as well as to identify places for more long-term consideration. The areas of discussion included: labor migration; migration, development, and partnerships with third countries; solidarity mechanisms for border controls and the potential for a common visa policy; and improved access to durable solutions within the second phase of a common European asylum system.

Labor Migration

Given Europe’s rapidly aging workforce, and the potential for a dramatic EU-wide increase in the ratio of retirees to workers, it is no surprise that immigrants are already responsible for 20 percent of the growth in the EU’a workforce. However, immigration is still a very limited tool used by Member States to attract, admit, and benefit from the work of immigrants.  Outgoing Commissioner Vitorino acknowledged in the public conference that no progress had been achieved in the area of economic migration, and workshop participants did not expect substantial EU legislation on economic migration to be a part of the pending multi-annual programme.

Despite these practical limitations, there are a number of important  areas that deserve consideration:

Getting a Grip on the Reality of Immigration Stops: Though many Member States maintain an official policy of immigration stops, and claim to have few immigrants entering the labor market, all states give some immigrants access to the labor market and several have active recruitment policies. Eight percent of EU-25 residents are now foreign born, and the majority of these are now in the labor market. Before policy reform on labor migration can be achieved, Member States must recognize and acknowledge the trend itself, as well as the potential competitive advantage that they gain by effectively exploiting it.

Comprehensive Research on the Topic: Due in part to the passivity of European governments on labor migration, there is only a spotty picture as to what sort of labor migration exists in Europe. In order to develop useful and coherent policies, Europe needs a greater understanding of what impact labor migration has on the labor market – including the separate categories of skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers – as well as the effects of managing the labor-migration process.

At What Level is Labor Migration Management Appropriate? Given the recognition of labor migration and an understanding of its effects, the EU must also consider what level of governance is appropriate to administer it, be it at the national, EU, or regional level.

What Obstacles Exist to an Effective EU-level Labor Migration Management Programme? There is no template for effective labor migration management, but there are a number of factors and deficiencies that deserve consideration when effecting reform. These fit into two categories: obstacles to developing a labor-migration management program at all, and goals for the administration and development process:

Obstacles to Developing a Labor Migration Management Program:

• The contradiction of offering third-country nationals the opportunity to migrate without considering the impact of the current mobility restrictions on new Member States, restrictions that could last through 2011
• The lack of acceptance of the theory of demographic aging, and thus the lack of urgency expressed by Member States on pushing the issue forward
• Concerns about the developmental impact of labor migration and the effects of the “brain drain” on third countries
• Continuing inter-EU competitiveness for skilled migrants, a trend that discourages cooperation

Administrative and Policy Goals for a Labor Migration Management Program:

• To clearly define the program’s scope, including whether or not an EU-level voluntary recruitment, selection, and vetting process could be effective
• To encourage cooperation between EU institutions and key stakeholders, including third countries, civil society, and social partners
• To find at least a partial solution to the continuing underemployment of immigrants due to disparities in the recognition of their qualifications
• To develop a plan to integrate and bring into the formal economy migrants in Europe who do not arrive for economic purpose

Another obstacle to effective labor-migration management that was briefly discussed is the impact of unauthorized migrants on the European labor force, which requires substantial attention to analyze both the “push” and “pull” factors behind the trend. The EU must not only consider the effectiveness of traditional measures to reduce the “grey economy,” develop law enforcement efforts, and remove unauthorized migrants, but must also look at less popular measures such as the establishment of legal labor migration programs and regularization to viably address the growing presence of unauthorized migration.

The discussion concluded that the next five years should be used for comprehensive planning, in order to prepare the EU to use labor migration to address the aging crisis.

Third Country Relationships / Migration and Development

Labor migration, and legal migration in general, is inextricably linked to the relationship of the EU with countries outside the Union, as well as to the level of development in those countries. Third-country relationships are managed almost exclusively on the national level, though the Commission has begun to engage more actively in such relationships. The participants agreed that the key action needed to improve these relations is the “restoration of circularity,” a two-way process between the EU and sending/receiving countries based on mutual respect and common interests. Participants suggested the need for a legal framework that might address both seasonal and permanent migration, as well as remittances and the prevention of the brain drain. However, the group was unable to clearly define what elements would constitute this framework. Elements to be considered include:

Recognizing the Economic and Humanitarian Incentives for Migration and Development. The link between development and migration is clear; people tend to migrate from countries where there is a lack of development, and therefore insufficient jobs. However, remittances from permanent migrants and skill sets gained through temporary migration can be a clear boost to the development of struggling nations, which is both economically advantageous in the globalized economy, and also meets a humanitarian goal. Current EU immigration policies, particularly those for skilled migrants, ignore both the economic gains to the EU and the potential for the structural development of sending countries. The EU must consider reevaluating immigrant admissions policy as tangential to its obligation to help developing countries.

Maintaining the Connection between the Diaspora and the Country of Origin. There is no coherent institutional structure at the EU level capable of forming partnerships with third countries and accommodating the desire of migrants to actively participate and help in the development of their country of origin through transnational networks such as remittances, foreign direct investment, and tourism. A structure for diaspora-based connections is a key component of the broader legal framework for third-country relationships.

Recognizing both the Positive and Negative Aspects of Diaspora. Although diaspora can be a positive influence through transnational networks and the development of ethnic identity, it can also be a driving force in the factors that lead to racial separation and eventual tendencies towards radicalism and terrorism. Migrants may also gain from diaspora a sense of security in the host nation that leads to permanent residency. Thus, proactive efforts to maintain diaspora connections should be subject to frequent evaluation and reconsideration.

Engaging with Regional, National, and International Institutions. The third-country-relationship framework should not limited to bilateral relationships, but should include other systematic learning and policy development relationships. The EU should consider working with the International Organisation for Migration and the Humanitarian Aid Office of the European Commission (ECHO) in addition to building bilateral EU-level relationships with sending countries.

The European Frontier: Border Controls and a Common Visa Policy

European borders have continually evolved and grown since World War II. The enlargement process has expanded the physical border, while the threats of human trafficking and terrorism have affected the concept of border management. While many new initiatives, including the Visa Information System and the Schengen Information System II, have created a cooperative mechanism for the intelligence aspects of border protection, these programs have not yet been fully operationalized, and the enforcement aspect of border policy has yet to be fully developed. The discussion on the European frontier focused on two main issues: border controls and visa issuance policy.

Border Controls. There currently exists a “variable geometry” in border policy, with little control of persons and goods in most Member States, and unique semi-participatory relationships with non-EU countries such as Norway and Switzerland. The EU has been slowly working to improve the preconditions for a common border-control system. For example, the new Member States were required to implement controls as a condition of accession. Some best practices already exist – for example, the Belgian Presidency created research centres for the integrated management of external borders. However, not all of these efforts have come to full fruition. The Greek Presidency sought an agency to enhance cooperation on external borders, a mission that has partially been achieved by the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (European Border Agency), but that agency still lacks a clear mandate. 

Visa Issuance Policy. Visa policies must manage a trade-off between the need to facilitate travel and the need to prevent bona fide persons of interest from entering the country. Because of the disparities among European countries as to how visas are treated, the process toward a common visa policy began with the Maastricht Treaty, which defined common consular instruction so that consular posts in principle would be following a common policy. The second phase of a common European visa issuance policy program would be to institute a common visa application center that vets data, including biometric data.

Recommendations: Participants generally agreed that a common border and visa policy is necessary to make Europe’s frontiers more secure. However, a number of suggestions were made to make such a strategy more robust. These include:

• Passport improvements, including a common passport stamping procedure, use of biometric data, and an improved version of the Visa Information System;
• Active consideration of a common visa application center, in order to help safeguard the common visa standards;
• Enhanced cooperation with third countries, and particularly those that are direct EU neighbors. Particular attention should be given to Eastern and Southern neighbors affected by EU visa policies; and
• An expansion upon the clear hint of the Constitutional Treaty by taking first steps toward a multinational European Border Guard, including providing a synergy of services at the external border where persons and goods can be screened together.

The Humanitarian Approach: Asylum and Durable Solutions

Having covered the economic and security components of migration, the discussion turned to humanitarian-based migration policy. Two specific components were considered: asylum policy – the laws, systems, and procedures that govern the reception, admission, and status of asylum seekers, and durable solutions – the long-term and lasting possibilities for providing refugees with some form of international protection against persecution.

Asylum Policy: The participants agreed that the EU must establish some level of a common asylum system beyond the basic instruments that already exist, including uniform status for refugees and subsidiaries, and a common asylum procedure. On the Member State level, there is growing “legislative fatigue” due to the number of proposals being passed in each nation; although more national-level legislation would be required for EU-level harmonization, the process would hopefully slow the legislative overdrive thereafter. There is political agreement on the Directive on Minimum Standards on Procedures in Member States for Granting and Withdrawing Refugee Status, but it has not yet been adopted. While UNHCR has made efforts to create a forum for discussion of these issues, and to draw together a wider circle of stakeholders to encourage such discussion, there continue to be practical harms facing asylum seekers that have not been addressed.

Durable Solutions: There are three traditional durable solutions for refugees: 1) local integration; 2) repatriation to the country of origin, and; 3) resettlement to a safe third country. Asylum seekers in a sense circumvent any management of this process by searching for homes away from their region of origin. Currently, local integration is rarely achieved; most European countries take very few, if any, resettlement candidates, and therefore the “preferred” durable solution is the return of refugees to their country of origin, in conditions of safety. The European Commission, the Dutch Presidency, and UNHCR have led discussions on greater access to durable solutions as a new strand in the EU’s approach to international refugee protection. This would include capacity-building for greater levels of protection in states in the region of origin, proactively leading to more opportunities for local integration, as well as an EU resettlement program. These proposals are new, and have been frequently misunderstood as a challenge to asylum. This picture has grown more confused with proposals for transit processing of asylum claims. These proposals provoke sincere concern that real discussion of durable solutions is being preempted and diverted in favor of other less protection-oriented mechanisms.

Recommendations: Participants suggested a number of solutions to be considered at the EU level for asylum and durable solutions. These include:

• Keeping a humanitarian focus based on the international legal framework, which includes recognizing that 90 percent of asylum seekers are still in their regions of origin. Tangentially, this requires changing the EU perspective on asylum from one of fear to one of acceptance.
• Recognizing that asylum seekers, many of whom are skilled, could fill many of the labor-market gaps created by the EU’s aging workforce.
• Working cooperatively to gather and retain information on countries of origin, in order to actively and carefully decide the possibility of return to genuinely safe third countries. This should coincide with the development of common approaches to caseloads and groups of refugees so that there is a shared and consistent interpretation of asylum cases.
• Exchanging and sharing good practices, frequent problems, and potential solutions at the EU level.
• Increasing the level of burden-sharing and solidarity so that asylum cases can be dealt with more effectively.
• Reviving the notion of traditional solutions to protection needs, and considering resettlement and voluntary repatriation as more viable durable solutions.
• Reprimanding countries which are in violation of EU directives or international refugee law.

Conclusions

On behalf of the conference participants, MPI President Demetrios Papademetriou summarized the main issues and ideas that had been discussed. Quite simply, in order to gain legitimacy on migration, asylum, and frontiers, the European Union has to do better. It must achieve stability, regulation, safety, and predictability in migration flows, as well as transparency based on principles of good governance.

Dr. Papademetriou discussed a number of key concepts, focusing both on the issues raised in previous discussions and on some general ideas for policymaking that would help expedite decisions on the multi-annual program.

Integration: Because immigrant integration is a rich issue that has just recently gained the EU’s attention, developments at the Union level will probably require extensive consideration before the arrival of robust change. Nevertheless, fundamentally successful and cohesive societies have to continuously manage the mechanism of integration, because it requires a continuous reallocation of power and the accompanying reallocation of public goods to create a receptive society for immigrants. Right now, the EU is doing a poor job of managing an integration curriculum at any level, from language instruction to job training and civic participation. A few points to consider in any integration policy:

• For a policy concept like integration that fundamentally requires the two-way acceptance of the local community and the immigrant population, integration must be governed from the bottom up: at the local level. The state and the EU must select and enforce the direction of integration by setting parameters and modulating the process, but the local population must accept and direct the actual integration process.
• How might the EU and Member States coordinate the integration process? It is clear that the way not to direct a process that happens naturally is to lead with rules that are tied to funding but not to the persons affected by them. The best integration policy is a learning process where local authorities and community members perform hands-on experiments with new approaches, and then that information is shared with the rest of the EU.
• The “us-versus-them” mentality frequently detracts from real immigration reform in the EU. Immigrants and, in many cases, asylum seekers are often treated as an external entity just at the point where their integration is most crucial. The EU has already made progress in lessening the distinction between who is ”us” and who is “them” through anti-discrimination efforts, but it is unclear if that distinction is being internalized at the local level, given the continuing presence of racism and xenophobia.

Labor Migration: There are two main questions which the EU must ask before it can begin to decide on labor-migration policy: 1) Does the EU have enough clarity to define goals for labor migration, and 2) Is our professed concern for maintaining the status quo as deep as we claim? The current mantra for the anti-labor migration movement advocates the need to protect EU natives in the job market and maintain opportunities for their advancement. However, this protectionist theory neglects the fundamental economics of modern society: there are already people, native and immigrant alike, who are “losing” under this system, and there will be even more that lose once the dependency ratio increases in the aging European society. Someone must pay for the rising costs of a social democracy. Thus, while the fears of native workers are well-founded, so are the fears of employers that they will not be able to find enough workers to hire. Also well-founded are the needs of a broader society that is losing the ability to negotiate over labor-force choices because the option of bringing in migrant labour is not even on the table. By refusing to consider all the potential options, the EU loses the opportunity to proactively manage migration and its effects, and instead faces change forced upon it by external forces.

To put the point more starkly, the issue of labor migration has become politicized; by reaching a political impasse, the EU has also reached a policy impasse. The current EU will not consider the political choice of migration until the proverbial “knife reaches the bone” – in other words, when society must cut retirement benefits, increase the length of the work week, and/or raise the retirement age in order to be able to afford social democracy. In order to arrive at a solution in advance of these points of desperation, real discussion about labor migration must be engaged.

Partnerships with Third Countries: Perhaps more than any other, the debate over how to deal with partnerships with third countries has been ill-defined and poorly managed. The word “partnership” inevitably implies a give-and-take requiring compromise and gains for both parties. However, the European attitude towards these ‘partnerships’ has been unilateral and forceful. The EU has an obligation to seek real negotiations with third countries, negotiations that establish mutual responsibilities designated to each party to the partnership and aspire to achieve comparative advantage among parties. The solution is not to topple and overrun third parties, but to discuss real partnerships if Europe desires to achieve substantial improvements in migration management

Borders and Controls: Commissioner Antonio Vitorino made the important point that border controls is an incredibly difficult and politically charged issue. Subsequently, no progress can be successfully made on European border controls if the sense is that a key element of such a difficult issue is still “out of control.” Particularly because of the Schengen relationships, the imperative is at the EU level to regain control over European borders, and the continued Mediterranean boat landings reaffirm the urgent nature of the issue.

Asylum, Refugees, and Durable Solutions: The EU must undertake careful consideration of many potential solutions for the perceived lack of control over streams of asylum seekers range from EU-level asylum application procedures to more robust refugee resettlement programs.  However, any solution must also maintain the primacy of the 1951 Geneva Convention and maintain equal entitlements for people granted refugee and subsidiary protection.  An EU-level asylum and refugee policy can be successful only if investments are made to ensure that the system yields fair outcomes.

Reforming Our Attitude Toward Migration Policy: Fundamentally, the success of European migration policy is a sum of its parts. It requires not only that the parts be specific, direct, and based on clear goals, but also that the whole achieves a level of coherency that avoids the politicization of its pieces. While the conference focused in large part on the design of the pieces, Dr. Papademetriou closed the conference with some commentary on developing the migration system as a whole.

• Too Much Poetry.  The EU, in its discourse and legislation, is focusing too much on poetry without preparing the plumbing. It should now undertake a consolidation phase to determine where significant gains could happen, and then build an infrastructure around the small steps necessary to achieve those gains.
• Circularity: Liberating the Vision of the System.  An important step in the development of a comprehensive European migration policy derives from Joseph Schumpeter’s economic theory of creative destruction: you must destroy some institutions in order to make improvements. European migration policy assumes that all future migrants are the self-image of those that came before them: they come to Europe to stay in Europe and become integrated into European society. However, there is a new brand of European migration, a brand that incorporates circular mobility, the return of a person to her native country after gaining the skills or financial success being sought. Europe must critically evaluate the effectiveness of the established rules in the face of this new trend in European migration, and be prepared to release or reform those institutions that are unable to adapt.
• Maintaining Relevancy. In any move toward change, there is a mobilization of actors and ideas that perpetuates itself with the energy and excitement needed for success. However, and particularly for those in an advisory role to policymakers, it is easy for the excitement over new and dramatic changes to overextend itself, to the point that a schism grows between reality and the fiction of change. Those in advisory positions must be careful not to get so excited about the potential for change that they ignore the need to manage the political aspects of change in addition to the substantive ones. Otherwise, they risk becoming irrelevant.
• Less is More in Immigration. There is a sudden and vast wealth in the immigration research and intelligence community. Europeans especially, in reaction to political pressure, have greatly increased their political appetite for new ideas, “legislation” (effective or not), studies, reviews, and meetings on immigration and related topics. Perhaps it is expedient to note that the breadth is superseding the depth of discussion on many such issues, and thus the range of available knowledge may be exceeding our capacity to assimilate what we hear.
• Better Communication Strategies. For the public and press to shift its opinions of migrants, refugees, and immigration policy from a security-focused perspective to a more well-rounded one, communication must not be an ad hoc process. The EU should take a proactive role in defining the issue and educating the public about the variety of ways to think about it, rather than continuing reactionary efforts that have little significant impact on the constituency.