Fáilte or farewell?

IMMIGRATION:Migration can make economic sense for everyone, but as the Irish economy slows down, will we welcome or shun foreign workers?

"Migration is the oldest action against poverty. It selects those who most want help. It is good for the country to which they go; its helps break the equilibrium of poverty in the country from which they come. What is the perversity in the human soul that causes people to resist so obvious a good?" JK Galbraith would have approved of Ireland's public rhetoric on migration.

For when politicians speak of the contribution of those who have come here in such great numbers over the past 15 years, their platitudes are usually couched not in the language of social solidarity or cultural exchange, but in that of economics.

In this, of course, they find themselves on firm ground; as countless studies have shown, recent immigration has made Ireland richer as well as its new arrivals.

Such has been the impact of their skills, ideas and work-rate that net immigration added between 2.3 per cent and 3 per cent to GNP between 2003 and 2005, according to economists Alan Barrett and Adele Bergin.

But what is one of the political elite's strangest habits - the insistence, generally speaking, on referring to migrants as economic actors, not social beings with all their attendant needs - also suggests one important yardstick by which their policies can be judged. If this era of global mobility makes us all better off, are we making the most of it?

Although some governments are keener than ever to be seen to be in control of migration flows, in fact they have never been more constrained.

The current immigration debates in the US demonstrate that even the most stringent border policing cannot keep large numbers from getting in. And within the EU, the free movement of labour means that national governments are powerless to influence the flows from some of their biggest sender-states.

But with labour shortages and falling birth-rates across the developed world, mining the pool of prospective (mainly skilled) migrants - while at the same time seeking to exclude those who are not wanted - has become something of a preoccupation. In Ireland, the search for the highly-skilled is driven by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which sets the terms under which most non-Europeans come here to work.

While the days of regular jobs fairs around the world are over, and employers - particularly since the EU accession round of 2004 - are encouraged to look first for EU candidates, the Government this year replaced a complex work permits regime with a simpler one. Its centrepiece is the "green card" (named after the United States' equivalent, but in fact little more than a two-year renewable work permit) covering occupations offering an annual salary of €60,000 or more, but also extending to some occupations in the €30,000-€59,999 salary bracket where "strategically important" high-level skills shortages have been identified, such as in healthcare, construction and financial services. Both employers and workers can apply for a "green card", and holders are allowed to bring their spouses and children to join them in Ireland immediately.

In opting for the "green card", the Government decided against an Australian or Canadian-style points scheme, which would allow individuals to enter the country and take up any job they wanted. Instead, the "green card" is aimed at filling specific vacancies.

"The fact that our employment permit arrangements will be based on job offers in skill shortage areas, rather than on unwieldy quota or points systems, will mean that they will be both responsive and efficient in responding to strategic high skill shortages as they emerge," said Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin, when he launched the new regime.

But while the new permit regime is, by common judgment, an improvement on its predecessor, some shortcomings persist. Patricia Callan, director of the Small Firms Association, points to the prohibitive application fees charged by the Department of Enterprise ("a money-making racket as far as I can see") and says bureaucratic delays remain a serious hindrance.

"That causes huge problems, particularly for small companies. Take the nurses claiming their green cards. The visa element goes through the embassies and the Department of Justice, then there's the work permit in the Department of Enterprise, there's the Garda National Immigration Bureau and on top of that, on the medical side, you have An Bord Altranais, the HSE and all of the dates for all these different documents have to fit in a perfect fashion.

"So, in practice that means that people are spending huge amounts of time following things up. One nursing home I was talking to started this process for an employee a year ago and only got it through last week," explains Callan.

Heidi Lougheed of the employers' group Ibec suggests that the "green card" is an attractive inducement and that Ireland is generally doing well in the global market for the most sought-after workers - albeit not always thanks to its own efforts.

"Some of the things we're winning on, we're not putting any effort into. For example, we're seeing quite a few young people deliberately look at Ireland and the UK because of the English language. They don't intend to stay here for the long term, but they do intend to pick up very strong English . . . before they move on to somewhere else.

"I think the Government has put in place schemes that they hope are attractive and are leaving it at that. I don't think they're proactively going out after people," Lougheed adds.

Callan sees the same passivity. "I don't think the Government has actually awoken to the idea that we want to attract people, and that we need to make it as easy as possible and as attractive as possible for them to come and live and work here with their families.

"I think there's still a perception that we're imposing barriers. If we're talking about delivering a high-tech, high-end economy, we do need these skills."

Research tends to support these views. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report published earlier this year, companies in Ireland are experiencing the most difficulty in the EU in recruiting foreigners to senior management and professional positions. It indicated that some 47 per cent of Irish organisations find hiring foreign senior management an arduous task, compared to just 22 per cent for the EU as a whole.

"Despite the EU's ambition of free movement of labour, it hasn't worked like that, especially when you compare it to the US, where mobility within the country is more than 20 per cent," says Philip McDonagh, director of PwC Economics and Public Policy Consulting and author of the EU-sponsored PwC report.

As McDonagh implies, Ireland is hardly alone in grappling with these questions. The European Commission estimates that labour shortages will peak by 2050, when 25 million Europeans are expected to retire and one-third of the population will be over 65 years of age. In September, the justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said this meant the bloc must ease its controls and admit an extra 20 million workers over the next two decades.

"Europe has to compete against Australia, Canada, the US and the rising powers in Asia," said Frattini, and the figures suggest he is right. While 85 per cent of unskilled labour goes to the EU and only 5 per cent to the US, some 55 per cent of skilled labour goes to the US and only 5 per cent to the EU.

For its part, the Commission last month proposed a new "blue card" (after the EU flag) to lure the highly-skilled. The plan envisages a fast-track scheme for foreign workers, so long as they have a minimum one-year work contract guaranteeing earnings of at least three times the national minimum wage, professional experience and health insurance.

Initially the card will allow access to the destination member state for two years, but after this period the workers will be allowed to move to another member state so long as they have a work contract.

The Commission knows, however, that it must tread delicately in a policy area that is guarded jealously by national governments, and has stressed that it will not dictate to member states how many immigrants they must take. Ireland, like Britain and Denmark will not automatically participate in the scheme, but has to indicate within three months whether it would like to. Germany, among others, could be tempted to play its veto.

Although the official rationale for high immigration is primarily economic, such considerations don't exist in a vacuum, and hostility towards immigrants - in Europe and elsewhere - is not mainly about economics anyway. Many Europeans are fearful of the impact of migration on national identities, or worry that their countries don't have the infrastructure to cope with more arrivals from abroad. Others are racist. Growing anxiety about terrorism has been taken up by anti-immigrant parties in Britain, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere and used to push for the closing of the gates. Surveys of Irish public opinion suggest that, although there are some mixed feelings on immigration, there is relatively little evidence of a significant negative attitude.

That could change, of course. If it does, the Government could find its room for manoeuvre in devising new admission policies significantly narrowed, and that possibility - acknowledged quietly by some within Government - imbues current thinking with a certain sense of urgency. The transaction between the State and those it receives - whether skilled or not - is one of mutual gain.

The task is to make sure the terms of the transaction are fair and clear, and that those who sign up are admitted not only as players in a global market, but as people with a stake in society. Even Galbraith would surely concur.