European greens on migration
February 29th, 2008
Click here and get a pdf version of the document that the migration workgroup of the European Green Party (EGP) wrote along past weeks.
The history of this document is that since Groenlinks wrote her position paper on migration, back in 2004, we have been asking the EGP to follow suit. We did not invest a lot of effort, but along the years the need grew, and finally in 2006 the workgroup migration started, following a position paper that Cathalijne Buitenweg wrote on migration then. People from the Kleurrijk Platform (me among others) could attend a couple of workshops organized by our fractie in Brussels and the Herleen Group in Paris, and a first meeting of the workgroup in Brussels, about one and a half years ago. The last meeting of the workgroup, occurred two weeks ago, I could also attend. In the meantime we passed an enquete to all green european parties, got results, and tried to convert the diversity of opinions into a coherent text. I was in charge of the inclusion of migrants (aka integration in NL) part.
What is politically interesting of this document is that it moves away from the idea of circular migration, quite popular in our parties few years ago. There were lots of discussions, but in the end, the proponents of the idea (Lubbers, among others) could not convince us that there is a substantial difference with the gastarbeider scheme of the fifties, an experience that we do not want to repeat. The circular migration proposal is that if we allow migrants to come, they will happily turn back to their countries of origin in few years. In order to do so, we would give newcomers a permit of stay valid for few years, and will deport them at the end if they would not get out on their own. No surprise such a position was not very popular in the european greens. What we plea for now is indeed more ways to get legally into europe, and the possibility of staying permanently if the person has a job. Plus integration courses. After all, that has been the core of the groenlinks positions on the matter, if you ask me.
Now, we will have to wait for green parties to read our text, and see what ammendments come for the next Council Meeting of the EGP.
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