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MIGRATION TO EU: DANGER OR OPPORTUNITY?

INTRODUCTION

Across the world, the number of people that are being affected by factors that cause
migration to developed countries in the increasing day in day out and Europe has not been left
out in feeling the effects of the immigrants to most European countries. The migration
underlying reasons to Europe include the Syria war, Afghanistan and Iraq fragile situations as
well as the increasing poverty due to African government failures. However, for the refugee
movements, there are major and concrete reasons not just about economic or poverty reasons. It's
noticeable that most immigration of these refugees usually occurs in an area that is within the
regions or countries of origin for the immigrants (Ikram, et al., 2016 p. 655-665). There have
been increasing measures that have been applied by various European Union governments aimed
at protecting the Continent Europe from the immigrants from the north African countries and
also West Balkan which has led to devising dangerous ways by the immigrant that are used for
ferrying these immigrants and ensuring that they, the immigrants, get a better life in Europe.
There have been numerous studies aimed at assessing the impacts of the migrations to Europe
which in most cases, these impacts have been driven by perceptions that are ill-informed which
can in turn cause antagonism of the general public towards migration. The ill-formed views and
perceptions on migration which are negative create the risks of jeopardizing the adoption and
application of migration policies on the host countries demographic and economic challenges.
It's therefore very hard to ignore the impacts that are created by the migrations to Europe with
the increasing rate of globalization because it’s as a result of the global evolutions in the modern
day society that we get these migrations as they are brought by reasons created by human
actions. The impact on the host countries will be as a result of how these host countries deal with
the immigrants and how they generally view the immigrants as either threats or opportunities
presenting itself at Europe’s doorstep.

Are immigrants to the European Union an Opportunity or a danger? To get an

understanding of this question and answer it accordingly, it’s wise to look at areas impacted by
the presence of immigrants to the European Union such as the; Labor markets; Public purse; and
Economic growth. For about a decade and a half now, the increase in Europe’s workforce has
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increased by slightly over 70% courtesy of the immigrants. Small numbers of entrants in Europe
have only been recognized to be through the labor-managed migrations where most of them are
reported to be through other means and channels that may include family, free migration
movements and humanitarian actions. In most cases, there is no direct relation of the migration
processes and workforce needs but it’s evident that immigrants play an important and significant
role in the labor markets. Europe has witnessed up to a 22% immigrants entry to occupations that
can be classified as strongly growing. These occupations include health care occupations as well
as STEM occupations (Moreno-Galbis, and Tritah, 2016, p. 76-98). It’s also notable that
immigrants have a representation of almost 25% and above in the cases of the declining Europe
occupations that include craftsmen, assemblers and machine operators. There has been a
progressive replacement in all these areas that are seen to be domestic and low valued where the
immigrants are filling up the needs of labor when they take these jobs referred to be unattractive
or lack career perspective. There is an economic advantage brought by the young immigrants due
to the education status and the fact that that they are familiar with present-day technology which
is not the case with the aging native old population. Most young immigrants have the better
formal education that matches with the young native-born which is an advantage over the old
natives nearing retirement. Therefore, with this said, it will be an added advantage because there
will be filling with the vacancies by the young immigrants that will solve the demographic
challenges that Europe is facing in its labor force. This will see the economic improvement in the
ratio of the individuals those who are economically active to the inactive as this ratio has been
decreasing in many European Countries.

Evident studies on fiscal impacts of migrations in Europe show that there are cumulative
impacts of migration waves experienced for the last 50 years or so leading to a positive or
negative 0.05% of the total GDP of majority European countries. These effects of immigrants
towards GDP contribution are highest in the countries of Luxembourg and Switzerland whereby
they benefit on a net 2% of their GDP from immigrants that go to public purse. Therefore its
evident that the immigrants are not a public purse burden and neither are they a solution to
address fiscal challenges experienced by countries. Except for the countries that have large
populations of older immigrants, most countries have immigrants who contribute more than they
receive benefits usually in forms of taxes and also through social contributions (Martinsen, and
Pons Rotger, 2017, p. 620-639). This is a fact translation that they contribute public finance
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infrastructure even though is to fewer extents as compared to the native-born. To an opposing

public belief that is widespread, there are better fiscal positions for the immigrants seen to be
lowly educated accrued by the benefits that they receive in comparisons contributions they make
when compared to the native-born lowly educated peers. In the cases where the immigrant’s
fiscal position is less favorable, it’s not as a result of great social benefits dependence but due to
a fact that their wages are low and therefore their contributions are less. In different countries,
immigrants’ households’ fiscal position differences are dependent on the tax system designs,
designs of the benefits systems and also by the differences that may be present in the population
of the immigrants on migrant entry and age of the migrants. Countries with a large population of
labor immigrant populations have advantageous fiscal positions compared to the countries where
the immigrant population is dominated by immigrants whose accounts are on humanitarian
bases. There is a better and favorable impact associated with the labor immigrants when
compared to other immigrants such as those under humanitarian care though with time it
becomes convergent. Immigrant’s fiscal position is seen to be less favorable generally in
countries that experience longstanding humanitarian immigration as compared to less recent
labor immigrants. With the countries that have welfare states that can be described as generous,
the financial contribution of the immigrants is only measured by the state of the immigrant’s
population employment. If the immigrant’s employment rates are increased to match those of the
natives, there would be experienced substantial gains in fiscal terms in the European Countries
which would result to an increase in the budget of 0.5% or more in terms of GDP. After all, the
aim of most immigrants is not to get social benefits but find work for the purpose of improving
their families and their lives too. Integrations efforts for the absorption of immigrants into labor
markets should thus be an investment and not a burden to the European Union.

There are both indirect and direct economic growth effects that are associated with
migrations. There is minimal doubt that when immigration occurs, there is an expansion of the
workforce and an increase in aggregate Gross Domestic Product (GDP). What is not clear and
remains confusing is the growth in the per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the first
place, there are effects of immigration on the demography by not only increasing the
population’s size but also affects the host country age pyramid. The presence of migrants’ leads
to a more concentrated young population which is economically active when compared to the
natives and this, therefore, helps in reducing the dependency ratios (Petmesidou, and Guillén,
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2017). Secondly, immigrants have with the skills, as well as abilities and this, help in
supplementing the host’s country human capital stock. This leads to a boost in the research,
creativity, and innovation and also added technological progress to the host country as a result of
immigration. There is also an increasing trend in immigration associated with highly educated
individuals who consist of tertiary educated individuals who have been on the rise for more than
a decade now by 70% to reach approximately 30 million or more. The reason behind is the
migration of the educated individuals is what can be called brain drain whereby educated
individuals migrate to countries that seem to be economically developed because they are sure
they will get employment as compared to their home countries where chances of employment are
minimal. Its however evident through various studies that there are significant effects positively
impacted by the workforce of the immigrants. Immigrants have contributed to accumulations of
human capital which counteracts mechanical dilution, but there is a fairly small net effect in
countries which apply migration policies that are highly selective. 50% net migration increased
by the foreign-born results to productivity growth variation of 0.1%.

The process of immigration triggers changes in host state in the areas of demography,
society, economy culture and politics too. All of these are evidently present in Europe due to the
fact that the continent could be described as third world country immigrant’s magnets witnessed
after World War II. The current situation of immigration is all about masses and not individuals
searching for better ways of life. European Union member states seem to be affected by these
issues that result from reasons such as past colonialism, guest worker schemes implementation,
reunification criteria for families and on fewer extents refugee admission and illegal immigration
(Berry, Garcia-Blanco and Moore, 2016). Different EU member states have different ways of
how they approach immigration management, integration, and citizenship defining criteria and
rights as a result of national traditions as well as the established immigrants’ relations. It's
certainly evident that immigration phenomenon creates public and political debates which can
therefore not be ignored on its operational process and efficiency. Despite the measures of
restriction by the EU member states on immigration, there will be continued immigrants flow
from the regions neighboring Europe leading to political, cultural, social and economic
diversification in Europe. As the gap between rich and poor regions continues to grow,
globalization process shapes the migration trends; there will regional conflicts in the European
neighbors which will call for beneficial immigration and one which can officially be recognized.
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Furthermore, Europe’s demographic projections show that their population is aging which will
continue due to the fact that their fertility rates are declining too. Therefore, immigrants are
linked to being of help when it comes to Europe fighting these projections that are negative by
creating demographic stability and also by workforce contribution. The important aspect that is
of concern in Europe’s third world countries immigrants is integration (Alscher, 2017).

Getting an understanding of the impacts that are as a result of immigration is important

for the society to usefully debate on the migration benefits and roles. These debates are in turn
important for the creation of policies that cut across various issues that affect immigrants with
the education and employment by maximizing the benefits that immigrants get from them.
However, the policy mix differs in the different EU member states. But in this case, there should
be questions on how to maximize the migration benefits that will work for both the host counties
and immigrants too have to be assessed and addressed in the future due to the fast-growing aging
population that results to an increased demand for immigrants to make replacements in the gaps
created by the aging workforce. There has been witnessed a shift in the refugee policies from
single national member states to the EU level. EU’s external border security has been achieved at
costs of creating agreements and by bilateral agreements and also by engaging the third world
countries that produce these immigrants. However, even though the focus has shifted to the
immigrants’ country of origin, humanitarians have the tasks for securing the lives of immigrants
who are persecuted and this can be done in and outside Europe under the guidance of
humanitarian services organization such as the UNHCR (Bansak, Hainmueller, and Hangartner,
2016, p. 2147). Due to a fact that there have been great dangers associated with immigration to
Europe via the Mediterranean sea, its crystal clear that the EU has huge pressures on migration
that have to be addressed by creation of related internal (national) and external (EU) policies and
applying the resources of the EU as well as its tools by involving the necessary organizations for
better policy making and implementation (Kraal, and Vertovec, 2017). However, it’s wise to
note that there are factors associated with efficient and effective immigrant’s integration. First
and foremost, it’s worth noting that a sustainable and effective integration policy incurs a lot of
costs in terms of political, financial and social resources which according to research, brings a
pay off in a period of 9 years in the mid-long term run. Secondly, refugee integration will be a
channel of converting refugee associated challenges to growth and job opportunities for EU
which is a translation that resources invested to the policies of integration will be for the future
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greatness of Europe in social, political and economic terms. Third and lastly, costs that may be
incurred in refugee maintenance in the non-integration long-run is considerably higher compared
to the costs that could be incurred on the integration of refugees.

By consideration on adopting migration integration policies, there are several policy areas
that are crucial and key that can lead to a harmonized immigrants integrations and thus create a
society my managing the crisis that has been witnessed in the Mediterranean. The policy areas
could be; Reduction of the irregular migration incentives by investigation of, disruption and
prosecution of smuggler networks and also help in the alignment of the return policies by the EU
countries (Andersson, 2016, p. 1055-1075). There also could be the building of partnerships with
countries outside Europe; Saving of lives and external border security is also another area of
policy that needs to be considered for it ensures that there is an aspect of shared management for
the external borders which will only allow controlled and integrated immigration to the EU;
Creation of a asylum policy that is common- which will ensure that there is an equal treatment of
asylum seekers in a manner that is humane and fair for the asylum applications in the member
states; and New policy creation on migration legality which will help to keep Europe to be a
destination for attracting immigrants at the time Europe is facing demographic declines which
can be done by action of reviewing the scheme of Blue Card, giving integration policies first
priority and by making better working environment for the migration policies which could be
made possible by making remittances easy. Therefore, the creation of these policies and
improvement on them could see Europe enter into virtuous circles. This means that in the event
where more immigrants find more jobs, and therefore, they will need less or no public support at
all and will, therefore, start paying taxes as well as contribute towards social security (Martin, et
al., 2016). This will motivate the integration of many immigrants if they see opportunities to do
so. Europe will realize developments the moment it will redirect the migration policy debates to
opportunities from dangers. There will be profound painful political consequences if all fails to
work out as planned.

CONCLUSIONS

Due to the recent rises in the civil wars, immigrants have been seen to cause fiscal and

social challenges and offer economic advantages to the EU member countries. in a manner that
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can be termed as short run, there have been increasing budgetary costs that are associated with

the provision of social benefits, education, language and infrastructure incurred by the host

countries where these immigrants go. On a long run view, the integration of the immigrants in

the labor markets of the EU brings social and economic budgetary gains. Creation and

implementation of policies on the immigrants' integration can come to create effects on the

outcomes of the labor markets, growth of the economy and the EU member country government

budgets on the medium-long run. In the attempts of creating effective and working policies on

immigration, there should be examinations and considerations of different angles and also

incorporate academic related findings and disciplines for the purposes of evaluating the effects of

migration on the areas of labor markets, welfare, societal and certain cultural aspects. This is

important for the creation of European picture that is common as the officials on the EU agree

that there is the need for collective efforts created by the individual experiences of the EU

officials. What should basically be addressed in the domain of integration is on the engagement

of the migrant nationals to take part in the civil life of the locals. There also should be the aspect

school reforms that are target oriented for the purposes of beginning integration at the stages of

initial development stages as individuals as well as representatives of certain societies is

important. There also should be immigrant and host commitment at ensuring that there is a

common understanding to make it possible for the two parties to work together in eliminating

segregations and frictions that maybe there and therefore attain the best way forward. Getting a

better understanding of the parties concerns is important and this is only possible if both parties

are open to each other. Therefore, the sooner the politicians get a better understanding of the

main causes of segregation that happens between the foreign and local societies the better

because there will be way forward laid down. There should be more and more resources
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allocated for researches on the best ways that could be implemented as policies to solve the

challenges that EU faces by providing a more reliable long term solution. By putting much

consideration on the situations of EU at the present moment, migration to EU could be rendered

an opportunity and not a danger. It’s evident that with the aging population and declining

demography in Europe, the future of the economic and security status of Europe now depends on

the ability of the cooperation between the settlement of the immigrants and the natives'

acceptance desire for these immigrants. The EU should not see immigrants as a danger but an

opportunity and utilize this chance to reap future economic, social and cultural oriented fruits for

the growth of the EU. Generally, for the growth of the European economy, immigration is good,

if only EU gets it in the right way.

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