The Regulation of Migration in the U.S. & Europe

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The Regulation of International Migration:The United States and Western Europe in

Historical Comparative Perspective

Brendan MullanInstitute for Public Policy and Social Research

andDept. of Sociology

Michigan State UniversityEast Lansing, MI 48824

ABSTRACT

This paper examines and compares the historical regulation of international migration in

the U.S. and in western Europe. I describe first the extent, the types and the stages ofmigration experienced on the two continents mainly since the middle of the 19th century,and I follow this description with a discussion of migration regulations implemented inthe U.S. and in Europe. This discussion covers the major strategic mechanisms used toregulate international migration, labor force strategies, family reunification strategies,selection/restriction strategies, and refugee/asylum strategies and assesses the rationaleunderlying each in both Europe and the U.S. The paper concludes that by failing tounderstand the complex social processes underlying international migration, building inloopholes and narrowly focusing on inconsequential details, legislators and policy makershave consistently symbolically addressed immigration issues, without actuallyaccomplishing major change or redirection in immigration flows.

The Regulation of International Migration:


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The United States and Western Europe in Historical Comparative Perspective

IntroductionConventionally, in liberal democracies the formal regulation of immigration is an explicitact of government with legislative and administrative components; legislatures set policyand administrations implement that policy on a day-to-day basis. A legislative-administrative immigration regulation continuum exists ranging from detailed legislativeregulation of immigration and little administrative latitude in implementation to flexibleadministrative discretion within a general legal framework (Hutchinson, 1981). Thebalance of this immigration regulation continuum shifts across time within nations, asevident in the changing regulations applied throughout history in the U.S. and in thevarious countries of Europe, and transnationally, for example, immigration regulationapplied across the countries of the European Union or, potentially, within the context ofthe North American Free Trade Agreement.

This paper examines and compares the historical regulation of international migration inthe U.S. and in Europe. I describe first the extent, the types and the stages of migration

experienced on the two continents mainly since the middle of the 19th century, and Ifollow this description with a discussion of migration regulations implemented in the U.S.and in Europe. This discussion covers the major strategic mechanisms used to regulateinternational migration, labor force strategies, family reunification strategies,selection/restriction strategies, and refugee/asylum strategies and assesses the rationaleunderlying each in both Europe and the U.S.

An Historical OverviewInternational migration has played a key role in the rise and fall of empires, states, andcoalitions of states as the world moved through the major political and economic stages ofmercantilism, colonialism, industrialization, post-industrialization, and globalization.

The modern history of international migration can be conveniently, if approximately,categorized into four broad stages: European dominated, colonization-driven migrationfrom about 1500 to 1800, industrialization-driven migration from Europe to the NewWorld from about 1800 to 1915, limited international migration in the inter-war years andup to about 1950, and the post 1950 emergence of migration as a complex multi-facetedglobal phenomenon (Massey, 1990). From the early formative period of the monarch-lead territorial state, through the differentiation and separation of the institutions ofgovernment from the monarch as a person, to the post French Revolution concept of thesovereign nation-state, the state has had the role of creating and implementing solutionsand regulations for human state-boundary crossing movement in the form of legislativeimmigration policies and administrative implementation of those regulations (Hammar,1992; Delbrk, 1994; Calavita, 1994).

Because of the limited state involvement in emigration, the endurance of free travel as aliberal ideal until the first third of the 20th century, and the relative youthfulness oftodays nation states, economic considerations have outweighed political considerationsin explaining the dynamics of international migration (Hammar, 1992:247). Wheninternational immigration began to emerge as a durable phenomenon with profound andfar-reaching consequences, control of immigration became a pertinent issue forgovernments, and four dominant state strategies for monitoring and controlling

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immigration emerged: external controls applied through diplomatic mechanisms abroad(embassies) and by immigration authorities at borders; internal alien controls of residenceand work permits and programs, employer sanctions, the maintenance of alien registers,and deportations; the granting of permanent residence in a country of destination; andnaturalization to full citizenship (Hammar, 1992:250-253). Although all of these controlmechanisms are used to some degree by most states, the U.S., a country of settlementimmigration, has employed mostly external controls and the transition from temporary topermanent residence, while Europe, mainly concerned with labor immigration in thesecond half of the twentieth century, emphasized internal controls to a much greaterextent. Because the two continents differ fundamentally in their migration history andexperiences, any comparison of U.S. and European national and transnational migrationpolicies requires first an empirical description of the extent, types and stages ofimmigration in each region.

Immigration to the United StatesSince its founding as a nation-state, the U.S. has always been a country of immigration.Approximately 60 million people have entered the United States as immigrants

throughout its history. As a proportion of the total U.S. population this immigrationranges from a low of about one half of one percent in the 1930s and 1940s to an averageof 10.4 percent between 1910 and 1920. In 1994, at 8.7 percent, the proportion of foreign-born is at its highest since 1910 when more than 14 percent of the U.S. population wasforeign born (CPS, 1994:2). When estimates of illegal immigration (between 2 and 3million) are added to the official number of immigrants, it is probable that moreimmigrants entered the U.S. in the 1980s than in any other decade. In sum, the U.S. hasexperienced two great waves of mass immigration, the first classic era between 1880 and1930 and the second new regimefrom 1970 until today. Separating these waves was amid-century period -- a long hiatus -- when immigration levels were much lower thanduring the preceding or succeeding decades and when the inflow ceased to be dominated

by Europeans (Massey, 1995).

These foreign born entrants are not distributed evenly in terms of either their region oforigin or their state of destination within the U.S. The change in immigration origin fromthe classic era (1880 to 1930) and the modern era (1970-today) reflects the decline ofEurope and the rise of the Americas and Asia as an area of origin. The vast majority ofimmigrants before the 1930s were from Europe. Northwest Europe supplied most of theimmigrants during the first seven decades of the 19th century gradually relinquishingmomentum to Southern and Eastern Europe by the early decades of the 20th century. Thenew immigrants of the late 20th century have come to the U.S. from all over the world;approximately 40% come from Asia (Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam Nam)and many ofthe remainder from Latin America (Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti).

Within the United States, the foreign born are not distributed evenly throughout thecountry. Today, California is home to 7.7 million foreign-born persons -- more than one-third of all immigrants to the U.S. and nearly one quarter of all California residents. NewYork ranks second with 2.9 million and Florida ranks third with 2.1 million foreign-born.Three other states have over 1 million foreign-born residents -- Texas, Illinois, and NewJersey (CPS, 1994:2). In 1990 these five states received fully 78 percent of immigrantswhereas a century ago, the preponderance of immigrants were located on the north-

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eastern seaboard of the U.S. with New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, andNew Jersey being preferred destinations, absorbing 54 percent of immigrants (Massey,1995:647).

Immigration Regulation in the United StatesMigration regulation has been a feature of American legislative, judicial, and executivelife since the earliest days of the Republic and indeed figured prominently at theindividual state level in the late 17th century and throughout the 18th and first half of the19th centuries (Proper, 1900; Albright, 1928; Hutchinson, 1981). The first federalimmigration law (An Act to Encourage Immigration, which created the Bureau ofImmigration to facilitate the importation of immigrant workers from Europe) was passedin 1864 in response to industrialists complaints of reduction in labor supply during theCivil War, decreases in immigration and rising wages (Calavita, 1992:4). The interplayof U.S. immigration policy with U.S. foreign policy or with the concept of sovereigntynotwithstanding (Zolberg, 1978, 1994; Scanlan, 1994; Delbrck, 1994), this, and mostsubsequent regulations, demonstrate that it is within the framework of the problemsexperienced by a developing capitalist democracy that immigration legislation can be

most easily explained and understood (Papademetriou, 1988; Calavita, 1992, 1994;Zolberg, 1994). More specifically, immigration was a critical labor-regulationmechanism underlying the growth and dominance of U.S. capitalism (Calavita, 1984:3-10). Because immigration was the source of a huge reservoir of cheap labor and thereforecrucial to American industrial expansion, industrialists promoted and supportedlegislative regulation to maintain and increase this reservoir while the American labormovement, fearful of falling wage rates and power dilution sought to limit immigration.The contradiction between the usefulness of a cheap surplus labor supply to an emergingcapitalist democracy and the poverty accruing from the depressed wages and poorworking conditions which required state health, welfare and criminal maintenanceexpenditure underlay much of the tension associated with legislative, judicial, and

executive immigration debate and regulation (Calavita, 1992:5-6).

Immigration legislation rarely leads to the desired outcomes. By building in loopholes,narrowly focusing on inconsequential details, failing to provide for adequateimplementation, enforcement or funding, legislators have consistently symbolicallyaddressed immigration issues, apparently responding to pressure group demands, withoutactually accomplishing major change or redirection in policy (Calavita, 1984:52). Muchimmigration legislation has been symbolic in that while the anti-immigrant demands oforganized labor apparently succeeded in achieving the passage of immigration limitinglegislation (e.g. the exclusion acts of the 1880s and early 1900s and the quota laws of the1920s), capital and industry satisfied their labor needs through alternative channelsusually involving short-term foreign labor programs or their tacit support andencouragement of illegal immigration. This contradiction in immigration regulation hasbeen aptly labeled the main-gate/back door system and has been the dominantcharacteristic of immigration policy for the past century or more (Zolberg, 1978;Papademetriou, 1988; Calavita, 1992). During the classic era, main-gate labor-backedimmigration exclusion legislation originated within the organized labor lobby and wasadditionally justified with allegations of racial and ethnic inferiority among immigrants,while concomitantly, but especially towards the end of the classic era and during the longhiatus, back-door immigration regulation (temporary worker programs, especially from

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Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s, and select exemption from exclusionary quotarestrictions) fulfilled capital and industrys labor needs.

Thus there is consensus that the direct influence of immigration legislation on reducingthe inflow into the U.S. was limited. If the cessation of mass-immigration in the 1930swas not due to immigration regulation, then what does account for it? Non-legislativefactors including the outbreak of World War I, the Great Depression of the 1930s, WorldWar II and the ensuing heavy demand for labor necessary for rebuilding western Europe,and the Cold Wars restriction of emigration from eastern Europe were major causes ofthe long hiatus in immigration to the U.S. during the 1930 to 1970 period (Massey, 1995:636-637).

The symbolic nature of immigration regulation and the associated unexpected effectscontinued in the second half of the twentieth century. The 1952 Immigration andNationality Act reinforced the central elements of the quota laws of 1917 and 1924 andthose of the 1950 Internal Security Act which excluded Communists from the U.S. TheAct established a four-category selection system within the national quotas specified in

the 1920s legislation. Fifty percent of each national quota was allocated for firstpreference distribution to aliens with high education or exceptional abilities and theremaining three preference categories were divided among specified relatives of U.S.nationals. This four point selection system was the precursor to the family reunificationpreference system enacted a decade later. Less than half of the immigrants of the 1950swere admitted under the quota system, many came under special temporary lawsfacilitating the admission of refugees and family members outside the quotas. Theimperfections of the national origins quota system were not addressed until thecomprehensive immigration legislation of 1965.

While the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which abolished national origin

discrimination and instituted a system based mainly on U.S. labor market skillrequirements and family reunification measures, was a very significant revision to U.S.immigration law, it did not directly confront the issue of back-door immigration, failed toprovide for refugee immigration, and had amendments exempting immediate relatives ofU.S. citizens (Papademetriou, 1988:323; Massey, 1995:638). By removing the quotasplaced on Asian immigration and actively promoting very significant family reunificationimmigration the 1965 legislation ushered in an era of significant immigration from Asia.Despite the conventional wisdom that the 1965 Act transformed immigration to the U.S.both numerically and source-wise, there is considerable evidence that the Act had littledirect bearing on the subsequent rise in immigration from Latin America or that it hadany real impact on shaping the process of immigration (Massey, 1996; Rumbaut, 1994).Once again, the legislation was largely symbolic and had little direct impact on regulatingor controlling the flow of immigration.

The admission of refugees into the U.S. has generally fallen outside the purview ofgeneral immigration regulation, and the various regulations for refugee admissions in the1950s and 1960s originated as Administrative Bills combining humanitarian concern withinternational political considerations to authorize the admission of refugees from warshattered Europe or fleeing from the Communist eastern bloc and Cuba. In the late 1970srefugees and refugee-related issues dominated congressional concern with immigration.

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The Refugee Act of 1980 repealed the ideological and geographical limitations which hadpreviously favored refugees fleeing communism and redefined refugee to conform withthe definition used in the United Nations Protocol and Convention Relating to the Statusof Refugees as one unable to return to his country of nationality or habitual residencebecause of persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion,nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Over one and ahalf million refugees were admitted to the U.S. between 1975 and 1991 (DHHS, 1991) andthe refugee admissions ceiling for 1992 was 142,000. More than 90% of these refugeesare from formerly communist countries of Southeast Asia, Cuba, and Eastern Europe(Majka and Mullan, 1992; Mullan and Majka, 1996).

Reform of the law relating to the control of illegal immigration had been underconsideration for 15 years, since the early 1970s. In 1986 legislation was enacted whichmarked the culmination of bipartisan efforts both by Congress and the executive branchunder four Presidents. As an indication of the growing magnitude of the problem, theannual apprehension of undocumented aliens by the Department of Justices Immigrationand Naturalization Service increased from 505,949 in 1972, the first year legislation

aimed at controlling illegal immigration received House action, to 1,767,400 in 1986.Immigration and Naturalization Service apprehensions dropped to 1,190,488 in fiscal year1987.

The prospect of employment at U.S. wages generally has been agreed to be the economicmagnet that draws aliens illegally. The principal legislative remedies proposed in the pastand included in the new law were employer sanctions, or penalties for employers whoknowingly hire aliens unauthorized to work in the U.S., and increased monitoring andapprehension capabilities. First, in an attempt to deal humanely with aliens whoestablished roots here before the change in policy represented by the new Act, alegalization program was established that provided legal status for otherwise eligible

aliens who had been in the U.S. illegally and continuously since 1982. Second, thelegislation sought to respond to the apparent heavy dependence of seasonal agriculture onillegal workers by creating a 7-year special agricultural worker program, and bystreamlining the previously existing H-2 temporary worker program to legalizeundocumented immigrants employed as agricultural laborers for 90 or more days in 1986.By 1989 the effect of the IRCA of 1986 was being felt: significantly increased funds weremade available to the INS for additional border patrols, and to the Department of Laborfor the inspection of employers records, some 2.3 million Mexicans applied for either thegeneral or special amnesty, and U.S. employers were officially examining a potentialemployees legal right to work in the U.S. (Bean et al. 1989). Undoubtedly, the 1986IRCA had a significant impact on the monitoring and apprehension, especially of illegalimmigration, into the U.S. but in terms of actually achieving a drop in the number ofillegal immigrants crossing into the U.S., IRCA was again mostly symbolic legislation.One carefully implemented empirical study estimated probabilities of illegal and repeatimmigration using data from Mexico and concluded that IRCA had not significantlydeterred illegal Mexican immigration into the U.S. (Donato et al. 1992).

Given that the 1986 legislation addressed illegal immigration by making large numbers ofillegal immigrants already in the U.S. legal, apparently making it more difficult to enterthe country, and imposing sanctions on employers for hiring illegal immigrants,

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congressional legislative attention shifted to legal immigration, including the numericallimits on permanent immigration. This was an issue for a number of reasons. Thenumerical limits and preference system regulating the admission of legal immigrantsoriginated in 1965, with some subsequent amendments. Since that time, and particularlyin recent years, concern arose over the greater number of immigrants admitted on thebasis of family reunification compared to the number of independent non-familyimmigrants, and over the limited number of admission visas available under thepreference system to certain countries. There was also concern about the backlogs underthe existing preference system and about the admission of immediate relatives of U.S.citizens outside the numerical limits. Major legislation addressing these concerns passedthe Senate and was introduced in the House in the 100th Congress (1987 1988). However,only temporary legislation addressing limited concerns passed both, leaving furtherconsideration of a full-scale revision of legal immigration to the 101st Congress.

The Immigration Act of 1990 represented a major revision of the Immigration andNationality Act, which remained the basic immigration law. A primary focus was on thenumerical limits and preference system regulating permanent legal immigration. Beyond

legal immigration, the eight-title Act dealt with many other aspects of immigration lawranging from non-immigrants to criminal aliens to naturalization. Major changes relatingto legal immigration included an increase in total immigration under an overall flexiblecap, an increase in annual employment-based immigration from 54,000 to 140,000, and apermanent provision for the admission of diversity immigrants from underrepresentedcountries. The law also provided for a permanent annual level of approximately 700,000during fiscal years 1992 through 1994. Refugees were the only major group of aliens notincluded. The Act established a three-track preference system for family-sponsored,employment-based, and diversity immigrants and also significantly amended the work-related non-immigrant categories for temporary admission.

The 1990 Act addressed a series of other issues pending before the Congress. It providedundocumented Salvadorans with temporary protected status for a limited period of time,and amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to authorize the Attorney General togrant temporary protected status to nationals of designated countries subject to armedconflict or natural disasters. It authorized a temporary stay of deportation and workauthorization for legalized aliens eligible immediate family members, and in response tocriticism of employer sanctions, it expanded the antidiscrimination provisions of theImmigration Reform and Control Act, and increased the penalties for unlawfuldiscrimination. As part of a revision of all the grounds for exclusion and deportation, itsignificantly rewrote the political and ideological grounds which had been controversialsince their enactment in 1952.

Currently, the U.S. Congress is considering a comprehensive overhaul of current laws onimmigration. The House Judiciary Committee already has completed work on a bill thatwould cut legal immigration by almost 25 percent by 2001, strengthen existing measuresto block illegal immigrants from finding work (including the hiring of 500 new INS workinspectors), double the size of the U.S. border force within five years, make illegal aliensineligible for nearly all federal benefits, and restrict benefits for legal aliens.

Immigration in Western Europe.

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Unlike the U.S., the countries of Western Europe have not had an uninterrupted history ofimmigration. In fact, it is only since about 1960 that Europe has received a significantinflow of immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, which significantlysupplemented the mainly intra-European international migration of the 1950s when EastGermans and Italians dominated the migration flows, and of the 1960s when largenumbers of Spanish, Portuguese, and Greeks moved to western Europe. By the 1970sEurope had clearly changed from being a region of emigration to being a region ofimmigration when its migration balance became highly positive (Mnz, 1995).

For centuries Europe dominated the worlds immigration flow, first through itscolonization of the New World, then through the supplying of workers for theindustrialization process under way in America, Canada, and the Antipodes. It isestimated that in the 115 years before 1930, approximately 50 million people or about 12percent of the European population in 1900, left Europe, mainly from the British Isles, theIberian Peninsula, and Scandinavia, the majority of them going to the U.S. (Ferenczi,1929; Mitchell, 1980; Massey, 1988; Hatton and Williamson, 1994; Mnz, 1995). Inessence, the classic era of immigration into the U.S. was mirrored by a classic period of

emigration from Europe. The outbreak of World War I stemmed this huge outflow fromEurope and the sequential phenomena of destination country entry restrictions in the1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II prevented any resumption ofthis emigration (Massey, 1990, 1995).

The year 1870 has been identified as a key turning point, before which emigration fromEurope was driven by the pan-European push factors of agricultural enclosure,agricultural and industrial technical improvements and innovations and, rural populationgrowth. After 1870, the U.S. had proceeded sufficiently far along the path ofindustrialization so as to pull immigrants from Europe lured by the ready availability ofwage labor in the manufacturing and extractive industries of a rapidly developing

economy (Thomas, 1954). The peaks and troughs of this European emigration were veryclosely tied up with the inversely related economic business cycles in Europe and the U.S.Recent evidence confirms the existence of an emigration cycle driven by demographicand economic forces which explains the mass migrations from Europe in the late 19thcentury (Hatton and Williamson, 1994:557).

Accompanying this overseas migration, during the century and a half from 1800, therewas very significant migration within Europe to meet the demands of industrializationand extractive industries in France, Germany, and Austria. Following World War I,migration within Europe can be categorized into that related to displacement and ethniccleansing associated with new state formation (approximately 6 million), foreign laborrecruitment (approximately 1.2 million), and refugee flight (1.5 million Russians,Belorussians and Ukrainians fled Russia and 450,000 Jews fled Germany, Austria, andMoravia) (Mnz, 1995; Mnz and Ulrich, 1995). Significant interwar immigration intoFrance was encouraged through a series of bilateral labor agreements instituted inresponse to the demographic effects of the first World War on the French population.

Mnz usefully categorizes migration in Europe since 1945 into displacement and ethniccleansing migration, de-colonization migration, post-colonial migration, labor migration,elite migration, and ethnic and political refugee and asylum-seeking migration (Mnz,

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1995:97-110). The first and last of these categories provide examples of how war anddisaster have fused to constitute a poverty migration, related to explicitly politicalevents. Immediately following World War II, some 12 million ethnic Germans eitherfled or were expelled from the eastern parts of the Third Reich and territories formerlyoccupied by the German Wehrmacht (Poland, the Baltics, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovenia,Serbia, Ukraine) or ruled during World War II by allied fascist and authoritarian regimes(Slovakia, Croatia, and Hungary) (Mnz, 1995:98). The 1950s and 1960s and late 1980sand 1990s witnessed fleeing Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks, Poles, Bulgarians, EastGermans, former Yugoslavians, and citizens of the former Soviet Union.

Decolonization and post-colonization labor migration are what turned Western Europefrom a continent of emigration into one of immigration in the second half of this century.In the 1950s and 1960s large numbers of workers from Southern Europe (Italy, Portugal,Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Yugoslavia) or from newly independent colonies such asAlgeria or Indonesia migrated to Western Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands,Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries as these nations experienced their postwarreconstruction and industrial expansion. These population movements accelerated in the

1960s, turning the previously homogeneous destination societies into nations with verysubstantial diverse and heterogeneous ethnic immigrant communities. A similarimmigration occurred in Britain with the arrival of substantial numbers of Britishpassport bearing immigrants from the newly independent countries of theCommonwealth.

Between 1950 and 1992 the foreign born proportion of Western Europes populationalmost quadrupled from 1.3 percent to 4.9 percent with the majority of the increaseoccurring prior to 1975 (Council of Europe, 1994; SOPEMI, 1995; Mnz, 1995). Inspecific countries the increase in the proportion of the population foreign-born in thisperiod was even greater: Germanys foreign born population increased from just over 1

percent in 1950 to 4.9 percent in 1970 and 8.6 percent in 1992, almost two-thirds ofwhom are from Turkey and Yugoslavia; Switzerlands foreign-born population was 6.1,17.4, and 18.0 percent of the total population in 1950, 1971, and 1992 respectively; theNetherlands foreign born proportion rose from 1 percent in 1950 to just over 5 percent in1992, of whom the largest numbers are from Morocco and Turkey.

In 1980 when the U.S. census enumerated 6.2 percent of the 230 million total populationas being foreign born, the four major countries of Europe (Germany, United Kingdom,France, and Italy) had a combined population of 225 million with about 6.7 percentforeign born (Livi-Bacci, 1993:39). This match in the proportion foreign-born betweenEuropes big four and the U.S. conceals different historical trajectories during thiscentury. In 1920 the U.S. had approximately 14 percent of its population foreign bornwhile France, Italy, Germany, and the UK combined had about 2 percent foreign-born.The U.S. proportion was at a low of about 4.7 percent in 1970 largely as a result of thelong hiatus, while the proportion foreign born in Europes big four countries rose steadilyafter 1945 to about 4.5 percent in the 1980s. In 1994, 8.7 percent of the U.S. population isforeign-born while the latest available figures for Europe, 1993, puts the foreignpopulation at a low of 1.1 percent for Spain and Finland, a high of 18.1 and 31.1 percentfor Switzerland and Luxembourg respectively, and an overall average of about 7.3 percent(SOPEMI, 1995:194; CPS, 1994:2). As a result of extensive immigration, Western

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Europes foreign population, as a proportion of the total population, has converged withthat of the U.S., at least in terms of magnitude.

Immigration Regulation in Western EuropeUntil the second half of the twentieth century Europe experienced no sustained majormigration inflows and consequently with no pressing need for regulation, the systems ofimmigration regulation which had emerged in many Western European countries in theearly 1900s to protect national labor markets constituted the only formal state-sponsoredimmigration regulation mechanisms. After 1945 and especially since 1960 however, thepreviously implicit non-policy practiced by Western European states has been replacedby a more or less articulated policy that includes both regulation and integrationmeasures (Hammar, 1992:256). Unlike the U.S., which is a country of settlementimmigration, Europe is primarily a continent of labor immigration and this distinction hasimportant ramifications for describing and exploring migration regulation within Europe.

In the aftermath of World War II, the major industrial nations of western Europeintroduced guest-worker systems through which large numbers of immigrants were

received into the labor force to alleviate chronic labor shortages and to facilitate the post-war industrial and infrastructural reconstruction (Bhning, 1984). The sending countriessaw participation in these agreements as a partial solution to their sometimes chronicdomestic unemployment levels and as a ready source of foreign exchange and wealthcreation in the form of migrant cash remittances and material goods being remitted. Theindividual migrants participated because they were lured by the magnet of higher wagesand steady work and the attraction of returning home with their target earnings in hand.As Castles puts it, they were becoming temporary proletarians abroad to avoidpermanent proletarianization in their own countries (Castles, 1986:770).

The conditions attached to being a guest-worker in western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s

very specifically listed the recruitment, working, living and legal requirements andexpectations of the participants in those programs. The major bilateral agreements werebetween France and Algeria, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and Turkey, between Germanyand Greece, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, and Yugoslavia, betweenSwitzerland and Italy, and between the Netherlands and Greece, Italy, Morocco, Portugal,Spain, Turkey, Tunisia, and Yugoslavia (Castles et al. 1984; Castles, 1986). In addition tothese bilateral arrangements, Britain (which had a short-live bilateral program laboragreement with Italy in the early 1950s), France, and the Netherlands received significantnumbers of colonial migrants from Asia, Africa, and the West Indies.

The bilateral labor agreements between agents in the receiving and sending countriesspelled out the conditions and rules governing labor recruitment. Agents of recruitment(commissions, labor brokers, or receiving countries labor ministries) were responsible forselecting the most suitable applicants and for regulating the immigration flow. As onesource notes, such agreements provided for selection procedures, transportation, housing,placement, wage and social benefits, transfer of savings and, in general, the various rightsand obligations of the parties to the work contract (Papademetriou, 1988:347). Workand residence permits were issued to each worker initially for one year and then throughperiodic renewal, usually for several years, and it was through the issuing, renewing, andcurtailing of these permits that the immigration flow was regulated. Within these general

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implementation guidelines, each labor importing country had its own specific regulationsand refinements, but the receiving countries shared several key characteristics andexpectations: they usually accepted as immigrant guest-workers only single personsinitially, did not regard them as permanent immigrants, accorded them very limited civilrights, limited the work to a specific occupation, and did not expect or intend that theguest-workers would settle in the destination country permanently. The guest-workerprograms in France, Britain, and Belgium were implemented soon after the second worldwar and were abandoned within a few years in favor of spontaneous labor immigration(Castles, 1986). In those countries which maintained guest-worker programs through the1950s and 1960s, so great was the demand for labor that many states eventually had togrant significant improvements to guest-workers rights in terms of more freedom foroccupational or industry mobility, longer-term stay, and family reunification.The early 1970s constitute a clear dividing line in European immigration patterns andregulation during the last 50 years. After the energy crisis of the early 1970s and thesubsequent increases in unemployment and the onset of economic recession in westernEurope, immigration was severely curtailed by restrictive measures imposed by Britain,

France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands to prevent any exacerbation of theworsening economic situation. Only skilled workers, the families of immigrants alreadyin these countries, and refugees gained regularized admittance after about 1974 or theearly 1960s in Britain. However, this sharp curtailment of the guest-worker programsfailed to have the desired effect of reducing, stopping, and reversing the immigration flowbecause the process of immigration once initiated generates its own cumulative causationand momentum (Massey, 1988). The guest-worker programs provided the initialmomentum for mass immigration and the immigrants intention of temporary staygradually gave way to more long term settlement in the face of the reality of integration,reduced desire to return home, and the arrival of immediate family members. Althoughthe guest-worker programs had all been officially abandoned by 1974, entry of dependents

and family of guest-workers did continue. In the Netherlands, for example, 80,000dependents of guest-workers had arrived by 1977, and in Germany guest-workers fromTurkey brought in large numbers of immediate family in the late 1970s and early 1980s.Immigration regulation did not have the desired effect and the guest-worker programsresulted in many countries of western Europe have large, permanent immigrantpopulations. The social foundations of immigration are impervious to externally imposedregulations and controls and once a critical threshold of mass migration has been reached,government regulations will have little impact on what has become a self-perpetuatingdynamic social process.

ConclusionThis paper has examined the regulation of immigration in the U.S. and in western Europe.Today, the U.S. and western Europe have approximately equal percentages of foreignersin their total populations but this convergence conceals very different historicalimmigration trajectories, immigration regulation strategies, and implementation of thosestrategies. The U.S. has always been a country of immigration and that immigration haslargely been of the permanent settlement type whereas western Europe has only recentlybecome a continent of immigration and that has been mostly temporary laborimmigration which has evolved into permanent settlement much more through processthan design or intent.

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Because of the post-1950 immigration, ethnic patterns in western Europe are beginning toconverge on those of the U.S. Substantial and distinct ethnic sub-populations haveemerged in Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Switzerland and theintegration, or lack of integration, of these groups has become a highly politicized issue.Increasingly there are calls for increased immigration controls, restricted social programsfor immigrants, and even for immigrant repatriation (Marger, 1992). Today, in manyEuropean countries the immigrant workers and their families are marginal components ofsociety and their social conditions are reminiscent of those experienced by successivewaves of European immigrants and southern black migrants to Northern U.S. industrialcities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As relatively homogeneous nations, western European countries lack the historicalexperience of the U.S. in absorbing large numbers of immigrants. There is a negativeideology of migration in Europe in that immigration is not perceived as making a long-term contribution to society (Livi-Bacci, 1993:41) . In contrast, part of the enduring mythof the U.S. is its self-perceived image as a nation of immigrants and despite nativist

clamor to close the doors, overall immigration is probably viewed favorably. In Germanythe eventual assimilation of the immigrant population, mainly Turks and Yugoslavs, is notseen as an appropriate societal goal. Very few of Germanys three million Turks havebeen afforded citizenship, even those who are second- or third-generation Germanresidents. No notion of eventual social integration was inherent in western Europestemporary worker regulation, the native culture is the dominant culture and completelydefines nationality and feelings of belonging.

In the end, policy makers must be made aware that the economic foundations ofimmigration (wages levels, economic development strategies) and the social foundationsof immigration (networks and information exchange) are inextricably intertwined and that

migration policies and associated regulations should be based on an understanding ofthose shared foundations.

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References

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The Regulation of Migration in the U.S. & Europe