World financial crisis has led to sharp cut in migration, says OECD

Immigration not ‘out of control’, but failure to help unemployed foreign workers risks social unrest, governments warned The world financial crisis has led to a decline in migration and a sharp drop in people moving within the EU, according to the west’s leading economic thinktank. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned governments it was wrong to say that migration, both legal and illegal, was “out of control”. But immigrants have been hit hard by unemployment since the economic downturn and governments must address this problem or risk the “stigmatisation” of foreigners and social unrest. The inflow of permanent immigrants to 24 OECD countries, including founder EU members, the US, Canada and Australia, fell by 7% in 2009. Much of this decline was the result of a 36% drop in “free-movement” migration within the EU between 2007 and 2009. There was a drop in migration from new EU member countries, notably Romania, Poland and Bulgaria. The number of temporary workers also fell sharply, particularly seasonal low-skilled agricultural workers and fruit-pickers. Seasonal migration dropped by 13% between 2008 and 2009, largely in Spain where people hit by the economic downturn took poorly paid, low-skilled work such as salad-picking, once only done by immigrants. The growing economic power of China and India had led to more people emigrating for work. Chinese citizens are now the number one migrants to OECD countries, accounting for around 9% of all arrivals. They tended to move to Japan, Korea or Australia and much less to the UK. Indian citizens were the third biggest group of migrants, butmany came to the UK. The number of asylum-seekers remained stable and relatively low compared with the early part of the decade or the historical highs of the early to mid-1990s. Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan are the biggest countries of origin. But South Africa was the main destination for asylum-seekers, with many fleeing Zimbabwe, Malawi and Ethiopia. However, the report warned that the world economic crisis had had a “disproportionate effect” on immigrants who now faced problems of long-term unemployment, particularly low- and medium-skilled immigrant men, as well as youths in their late teens and early 20s. This was particularly so in countries where immigration had soared in recent years, namely Ireland and Spain. In Spain in the last quarter of 2010, unemployment among foreigners was 29%, against 18% among the native Spanish. “It is imperative to address this problem,” the report warned, otherwise there would be long-lasting effects on the labour-market integration of immigrants which could lead to “both stigmatisation and social unrest”. According to John Martin, OECD director for employment, labour and social affairs, as economies begin to recover, the effect of ageing populations and workforces is likely to mean the demand for migrant workers would begin to increase again. But societies would only be ready for this if governments took responsibility for telling their voters the truth about immigration and its positive benefits, he said. “It is important to get the facts out in the public domain. Migration, both legal and irregular, cannot be considered to be out of control and governments have shown that slowly but surely, they can improve its management.” He said governments should work on better integration of foreign-born workers and their children and not leave immigrants in ghettos. The report concluded that, given the severity of the economic crisis, migration movements – including family and humanitarian migration – had not declined as much as might have been expected. The inflow of permanent immigrants to OECD countries remained higher than it was before 2007. Migration Europe Global recession Financial crisis European Union Unemployment Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 12, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.