Immigrants have become the subject of increasingly strident political debate in many European countries. The flow of workers into the UK and Ireland following the EU’s 2004 enlargement was the largest inward migration ever recorded into either country over a two-year period. Spain’s official immigrant population has risen by 400 per cent in ten years. And Italy worries about an estimated 100,000 Romanian immigrants, most of whom are thought to be without a job. In some places, robust growth and falling unemployment have helped to assuage concerns about the impact of immigration on local labour markets. But despite this – and economists’ warnings that Europe will need ever more migrants in the years ahead – most polls show that migrants are seen as a problem, rather than as an opportunity.

In August 2006, the EU launched the first of two projected joint border patrols at its southern border in response to mass inflows of irregular migration from Africa. This development has simultaneously been criticised as a further buttress of ¨fortress Europe¨and defended as performing an important humanitarian task. It cannot, hoever, be judged in isolation, and must be set within the context of the full range of migration-control measures that are directed at Africa. This broader picture indicates that if the EU is serious in its aim of effectively controlling migration from that continent without compromising the rights of migrants and the interestes of third countries, it will have to adopt an approach that makes use of the full range of policy tools available to it and takes a longer-term, curative perspective.

El derecho a buscar y disfrutar asilo está bajo una seria amenaza en la Unión Europea. La fortificación de Europa contra aquellos que buscan asilo corre el peligro de dar alas al mercado laboral ilegal y al tráfico de seres humanos.