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The Schengen effect

Economics drive illegal immigrants toward European Union
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July 4th, 2007 issue

“To become an asylum seeker in a neighboring country is a way of looking for work while the family members are safe, free from harassment and unwanted hostilities back home” — Mita Castle-Kanerova, visiting lecturer at Charles University in Prague.
As the country prepares to assume the European Union presidency in 2009, officials are busy readying for the Schengen enlargement, which is expected to go into effect this fall. Schengen will bring border checks between old and new EU member countries to an end. In basic terms, people from other EU states will not have to show their passports when they enter the Czech Republic, and Czechs won’t have to show theirs to enter other EU countries. Travelers still will have to carry some sort of identification, which can be a passport.
Czech officials have said that implementing Schengen is a top priority. They intend to have it in place on the borders by September.
With this deadline in mind, we have seen a recent visible police crackdown on illegal immigrants on the streets of Prague and other places around the country. This seems to be a classic case of perception being king. The government wants to be seen as being tough on the issue and thus we see a very public show of force. But it is the facts themselves that speak loudest when one looks in more detail at this emotive subject.
Between 2000 and 2005, the official number of illegal immigrants fell 300 percent from 55,000 in 2000 to 15,000 in 2005, according to government statistics. So why is the issue suddenly so divisive? An area for real concern is with the statistics themselves.
Are there really only 15,000 illegal immigrants in the Czech Republic or are there actually hundreds of thousands of illegal foreign workers, as the chairman of the Civic Democratic Party, Mirek Topolánek, has been quoted as saying. Topolánek says forcing these workers from the marketplace would cripple the flourishing construction industry. He also maintains manufacturing sector companies are complaining about a severe shortage of available labor.
What is fact and what is fiction? Is there a powerful illegal immigrant economy? If so, is it vital to national productivity? Or is the political right wing just trying to make us believe we are awash with illegal refugees?
First, one must realize that the specter of foreign invasion weighs heavily on public. There is an innate fear about waves of foreigners flooding the country.
If government figures are to be believed, there is actually a decrease in illegal immigrant numbers. Add to this the proposed amendments to asylum law that would restrict state benefits to foreigners and it becomes increasingly difficult to believe the Czech Republic is soft on immigration. It is downright implausible this can be perceived as some kind of golden goose by a would-be illegal immigrant.
The experience here of the Roma, or Gypsies, can only confirm that life as an illegal immigrant is difficult at best. In fact the Schengen enlargement could adversely impact the Roma population. There is a real threat that the Roma could be defined as illegals within the new system. This comes after their lengthy battle for citizenship rights and child welfare.
We should not forget that the Roma, or Gypsy, population makes up the country’s second-largest minority population after Slovaks and have lived in the region since the 16th century. There are an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Romany in the Czech Republic.
Many of the Schengen changes are likely to affect East European Roma, according to Tanja Koch-Baerman, an expert on Baltic state affairs.
For Czech Romany who have lived in the Republic pre enlargement, there are still questions as to whether they can be deemed as illegals.
There has been no official statement about this specific issue, but it seems highly unlikely that they would be given that the Czech Republic is a full member of the European Human Rights Act.
Don’t forget that European laws on police, customs, length of stay for foreigners and foreigners’ rights go into effect as the Czech Republic becomes a Schengen country. This unity of agencies across the whole of the expanded Europe should create a greater and effective defense against organized crime and terrorism.
Why, in contrast, do the Czech Counter Intelligence police consider illegal immigration as a real and potential threat? The counter-intelligence office says there are militant, terrorist and radical religious groups that threaten the security of the country among illegal immigrant populations.
Though this may be true, it’s disingenuous. If you look at the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, for example, they were carried out by UK-born citizens. It seems that in today’s climate the minutia of terrorism and extremism are of a far more complex nature than our leaders are sometimes prepared to admit. We should not fall into the trap of sweepingly criminalizing illegal immigrants. The issue is economic welfare, not criminal intent. The majority of illegal immigrants are here to better their lives, to find work, to feed their families. The shoe is on the other foot for the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians who work today throughout the rest of Europe.
There have always been great efforts made by the poor and dispossessed to risk everything to cross borders in search of a better life. The Czech people are as aware of this as any other nation in Europe. What is imperative is that there are efficient and fair asylum and tribunal systems in place to deal with cases impartially and quickly. It is for governments to ascertain legally and impassionately each individual case and not for them to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment through the press and on the streets. This is not only a dangerous policy but strangely backward-looking for a country that has agreed on full entry into the European Union.
— The author splits his time between Prague and London.


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