REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

As the Commission communication on immigration, integration and employment of 2003 334 has reasoned, regularisation may indeed also be used to promote the integration of third country nationals in an irregular situation into mainstream society and, by implication, as a measure against social exclusion and marginalisation. Although regularisation and thus integration may not be the preferred option in dealing with the presence of irregular migrants, irregular migrants should not be – a priori – excluded from the agenda of promoting the integration of immigrants and fighting social exclusion. This is not least since the sustained presence of marginalised groups without clear rights is clearly undesirable and may contribute to discrimination, racism and xenophobia. 335 Moreover, several more fundamental legal principles and principles of good governance equally could be invoked in the development of regularisation policies, including legality (that is, that administrative decisions should be taken after due process of the law, should follow clear and transparent procedures and should be based on clear criteria), the availability of legal remedies against administrative decisions, reasonable duration of administrative procedures, nondiscrimination, and proportionality, amongst others. Finally, in addition to following certain basic principles that have informed the development of European Union migration policy under the Tampere and Hague agendas (as well as more general legal principles), the development of regularisation policy on the European level could also aim at some of the same general objectives of migration policy development in the European Union. In particular, it could aim at harmonising procedures and procedural standards and harmonising the legal statuses of regularised migrants along with the attached rights and obligations. 334 COM(2003) 336 final, op. cit. 335 In recognition of the diverse interlinkages of legal status (or lack thereof) and social exclusion, a forthcoming study on minorities, migrants and employment which was recently commissioned by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency will include a section on undocumented migration and vulnerability. See A. Kraler, S. Bonjour, A. Cibea, M. Dzhengozova, C. Hollomey, T. Persson, D. Reichel (2009), Migrations, Minorities and Employment. Study regarding discrimination on grounds of race and ethnicity in the area of employment. Forthcoming at http://fra.europa.eu 108
8 Policy Options OPTION 1: REGULATION OF REGULARISATION ACTIVITIES OF MEMBER STATES Description: Such a proposal for a directive or regulation would set common standards for regularisation across the EU Option 1a: Blanket ban on mass regularisations Rationale and possible impact: In the context of freedom of movement and the gradual emergence of a common labour market, it is sometimes asserted that large-scale regularisation programmes potentially negatively affect other Member States, contribute to unsolicited secondary movements of regularised migrants and unintentionally regularise third country nationals who are illegal residents of another Member States. Such programmes are also thought likely to provoke new illegal immigration from third countries. This, one could argue, undermines the common position of EU Member States to combat illegal migration and breaches the principle of solidarity on which policies on migration are based. However, there is little evidence to support the claim that regularised immigrants are likely to move on to other Member States as any legal status granted under regularisation schemes is confined to a single Member State. There is limited evidence that regularisation in one Member State has led to immigration of irregular immigrants from (or transiting) other Member States, although the magnitude of in-migration is likely to be small. 336 Not unsurprisingly, regularisation programmes (or rumours about pending regularisation programmes) are likely to reduce voluntary returns of failed migrants, 337 but are unlikely to have an overall effect on returns. However, there is hardly any evidence for a pull effect from third countries, although pull effects might be more important for selected groups of immigrants. Thus it is not obvious why such a strong measure is warranted. In addition, such a proposal ignores possible rationales for regularisation programmes and would reduce the flexibility available to Member States in responding to particular problems. If implemented, a blanket ban is likely to have unexpected effects (e.g. de facto regularisations as in Italy 2006, rise in asylum applications and increased costs for the asylum system, increase in the irregular migrant population, increased informal employment etc.). A ban on large-scale regularisations would still permit the operation of individual, temporary and humanitarian mechanisms. However, the implementation costs of these are high, and mostly unknown: ruling out this policy option would severely limit Member States’ policy options in their management of the problem. 336 In order to prevent unsolicited inflows of irregular immigrants from other Member States, Belgium, for example, temporarily reinstalled border controls during its 2000 regularisation programme (MS response Belgium). 337 According to a memorandum by the Belgian minister responsible for migration and asylum, persistent rumours about an imminent regularisation programme is, along with other factors (notably the most recent enlargement of the European Union and the accession of Bulgaria and Romania) a major reason for the decline of voluntary returns from 2006 to 2007 (see Chambre des Représentants de Belgique, Note de Politique Générale de la Ministre de la Politique de Migrations et d’Asile. 21 Avril 2008, DOC 52 0995/020, p.12). 109
Page 1 and 2:
REGINE Regularisations in Europe St
Page 3 and 4:
CONTRIBUTORS Principal authors Mart
Page 5 and 6:
Preface In December 2007, the Europ
Page 7 and 8:
1 Terms, definitions and scope 1.1
Page 9 and 10:
Table 1: Types of illegal or irregu
Page 11 and 12:
1.3 Freedom of movement rights and
Page 13 and 14:
1.4 The meaning of ‘regularisatio
Page 15 and 16:
Regularisation Mechanism A regulari
Page 17 and 18:
2 Previous comparative studies on r
Page 19 and 20:
Generally, the focus of SOPEMI repo
Page 21 and 22:
enefiting from regularisation has s
Page 23 and 24:
amnesty and moreover involved (limi
Page 25 and 26:
2. 3 The Odysseus study on regulari
Page 27 and 28:
etween expediency and obligations c
Page 29 and 30:
Sunderhaus identifies several ratio
Page 31 and 32:
whether it can be attributed to pul
Page 33 and 34:
Box 2: 3-tier earned regularisation
Page 35 and 36:
measures; it does address questions
Page 37 and 38:
3.1.1 Regularisation Programmes Ove
Page 39 and 40:
Nine Member States provided details
Page 41 and 42:
Figure 3 Grants of regularised stat
Page 43 and 44:
Box 3: Regularisation policy in Swi
Page 45 and 46:
3.2 Regularisation as a policy resp
Page 47 and 48:
Table 5: Comparative table of regul
Page 49 and 50:
case in Europe, alongside the more
Page 51 and 52:
that a year after regularisation so
Page 53 and 54:
treatment according to nationality,
Page 55 and 56:
iii. issues of advance planning iv.
Page 57 and 58:
iv. the requirement to appear in pe
Page 59 and 60:
denying residence permits to existi
Page 61 and 62:
efugees under the provisions of the
Page 63 and 64: 4 Government positions on policy 15
Page 65 and 66: 5 Positions of social actors 5.1 In
Page 67 and 68: Since the 1990s - and in some count
Page 69 and 70: live their lives without fear.” 1
Page 71 and 72: admission policies. 181 The Danish
Page 73 and 74: and useful, if planned and implemen
Page 75 and 76: depend on (unskilled) immigrant lab
Page 77 and 78: migration”. 209 In the opinion of
Page 79 and 80: stresses that “economic immigrati
Page 81 and 82: undocumented migrants by the Brusse
Page 83 and 84: NGO/Country Main activities in rega
Page 85 and 86: NGO/Country Assessment of own role/
Page 87 and 88: known that this makes them vulnerab
Page 89 and 90: eaching reforms of the overall fram
Page 91 and 92: Accord of March 2008 have not yet b
Page 93 and 94: Table 8: Suggested target groups fo
Page 95 and 96: policy measures that could be adopt
Page 97 and 98: followed by the granting of any sta
Page 99 and 100: for irregular migrants, while Italy
Page 101 and 102: interpretations of the EU directive
Page 103 and 104: considered to be “flexible, adapt
Page 105 and 106: iii. Measures and sanctions against
Page 107 and 108: of international protection, it is
Page 109 and 110: 7.2 European Union approaches to il
Page 111 and 112: immigration.” 321 Finally, the st
Page 113: involve large numbers. Secondly, th
Page 117 and 118: initiative. In the case of permanen
Page 119 and 120: Ultimately, a comprehensive definit
Page 121 and 122: nor need it be seen as an endorseme
Page 123 and 124: permits, Member States should take
Page 125 and 126: OPTION 6: STRENGTHENING THE PRINCIP
Page 127 and 128: Rationale and possible impact: Upon
Page 129 and 130: information exchange could contribu
Page 131 and 132: d) apprehension data should disting
Page 133 and 134: OPTION 11: REVIEW OF ADMINISTRATIVE
Page 135 and 136: 9 Conclusions and preferred policy
Page 137 and 138: management of irregular migration s
Page 139 and 140: more reserved than that of Business
Page 141 and 142: 9.5.2 Policy issues Previously (in
Page 143 and 144: Option 6a Facilitating access to lo
Page 145 and 146: Italy Ministerio Interno, Dipartime
Page 147 and 148: Federacion Andalucia ACOGE, Respons
Page 149 and 150: 11 References - secondary sources 1
Page 151 and 152: United Kingdom, European Democrat G
Page 153 and 154: Hollifield, J. (2004): ‘France: R
Page 155 and 156: Papademetriou, D. (2005): The “Re
Page 157 and 158: Watts, J. (2002): Immigration Polic
Page 159: European Commission, Proposal for a
show all

REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?