We need a 21st century Marshall Plan to curb migration to Europe
Here is the shipping forecast. The skies are blue, the weather’s getting better, the temperature is rising, and with it so is the number of ramshackle, unseaworthy vessels packed with desperate people trying to cross dangerous waters in search of better life in Europe. Some will reach the shores of the promised land but then find that milk and honey is in increasingly short supply in an era of populism and jobs lost to automation. Others will die along the way.
This scenario is destined to play out every year for the foreseeable future, and to play into calls for the walls of Fortress Europe to be built higher and higher. Across the continent many of our policymakers are caught in the democratic system’s electoral cycle. On the one hand many accept the argument that Europe’s low population growth means we need mass immigration to pay for the pensions and healthcare of elderly populations. Yet when faced with opinion polls hostile to such a policy, and with an election coming up, many tack to the prevailing political wind. However, as argued further below, mass immigration may not be necessary.
This week, with Covid-19 possibly beginning to be tamed, politicians in several countries returned to the subject of migration amid signs that 2021 could see higher numbers of people crossing from Africa than for several years.
Denmark took the most drastic action. On Thursday its parliament voted to allow asylum seekers arriving in the country to be sent to a third country while the asylum claim is processed. Denmark has been negotiating with Rwanda as a potential partner in the scheme which is supported by political parties on the left and right but has been described by the UNHCR’s representative for Nordic and Baltic countries, Henrik Nordentoft, as a “frightening race to the bottom”. The bill passed with 70 votes for and 24 against.
On Monday Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi met with his Libyan counterpart, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, to discuss the rising numbers of migrants heading for his country from the beaches in Libya. Draghi announced “humane” plans to cut illegal arrivals in co-operation with the Libyan and Tunisian governments, and details on how to redistribute migrants across the other 26 EU member states. So far this year more than 14,000 migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in Italy, and well over 600 people have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean. Thousands more have been intercepted by the Libyan authorities and placed in squalid detention centres.
Also this week the Greek cabinet was presented with draft legislation calling for tighter migration controls and outlining ways to increase the number and speed of deportations. The government seeks to bypass the formal “returns” process which requires the consent of the country of origin. In France President Macron warned of a migration crisis if the UN/EU development programmes in Africa fail, but then threatened to pull his 6,000 troops out of the Sahel following the coup in Mali. If any of the five Sahel states collapse, we can expect to see a surge in migration up into North Africa and on to Europe.
Spain continued its war of words with Morocco following last month’s row after Morocco effectively allowed 8,000 migrants to cross into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. Matteo Salvini, the hard right, and popular, leader of the Northern League praised Spain’s decision to send in troops to throw the migrants back into Morocco and said: “Now it’s our turn”.
This brings us back to Fortress Europe, pensions, demographics, and automation. What is often missing from the debate is the question – what happens when peak migration meets peak automation? If there are increasingly fewer jobs for migrants to do, there is less tax revenue. Most studies predict that AI and automation will create jobs, but nowhere near the number that will be lost and, crucially, most of those lost will be low skilled.
A 2018 PwC study looked at 200,000 jobs across 29 European countries to assess what the impact of automation will be over 20 years. It suggests that we are currently experiencing the beginnings of a process which by the mid 2030s will have led to up to 30 per cent of current employment being automated. Most research predicts similar or greater degrees of job loss.
If this is the case, then then being open to relatively substantial but managed migration of skilled workers in order to combat demographic decline makes sense. In whose interest is it to allow large numbers of people seeking jobs to arrive in places where the jobs they can do are disappearing? But it’s not enough to end the argument there. Without doubt large numbers of people will still attempt to reach Europe illegally. You can make the argument that a government’s responsibility is to prevent this, but no matter how harsh the measures taken, and they may well get harsher, it will have a limited effect on the flow.
A policy of managed immigration while combatting people smuggling can only have a chance of succeeding if the issues pushing millions of people to leave their homes are dealt with. That requires a heart, a clear head, and an absolute commitment to fighting climate change, reducing poverty, promoting education, and spending wisely sums of money akin to the Marshall Plan but on a 21st century scale. What it doesn’t require is a cut to aid budgets.