Xenophobic tide

The impact of the economic crisis on national debt and employment has once again put immigration on the European agenda. There is nothing inevitable about this; it is simply that the problems of the majority of Europe's economies have created the ideal conditions for the spread of populist and xenophobic ideas.

For their part, the mainstream parties have done little to prevent this, instead descending to the level of these emerging forces and discussing issues such as immigration on their terms. Measures against immigrants that until relatively recently would have been met with scorn are now part of the electoral and administrative programs of Europe's principal parties. What's more, the European Union is allowing itself to be swept along by this dangerous tide, as has been shown by the EU parliament's efforts ? which, fortunately, have failed ? to approve a draft "single permit" law to simplify procedures for legal immigrants to obtain residence and work permits in the EU.

The return of immigration to the top of the political agenda must not hide the U-turn that the debate has taken. When Europe's economies were booming, the EU was concerned with measures to slow the flow of foreign workers here, highlighting the supposed threats for the continent's culture and national identities. Now it is discussing ways to deprive them of their rights. And not simply the rights that they, like anybody else, are entitled to ? and which are not always recognized anyway ? but the rights they have acquired from having worked legally, and as a consequence of which have paid taxes and accrued rights to social security benefits.

Put simply, populist and xenophobic measures that would deprive overseas workers of the benefits they are entitled to are increasingly being pushed, in a bid to relieve the electorate of some of the hardships they are enduring as a result of budget and public-spending cuts. And as some of the measures outlined in the single permit directive show ? such as non-EU workers losing pension rights if they return to their country ? it now seems that the mainstream parties have been unable to resist the temptation.

The difference between the mainstream parties and those on the far right of the political spectrum is that the former lack the courage to propose measures restricting non-EU workers' rights, preferring instead to hide behind the cloak provided by the EU parliament in Strasbourg. Rather than accepting the ignominy of what they are proposing, they instead paint themselves as disciplined executors of EU directives.

This approach merely encourages the populists and xenophobes, giving them a democratic fig leaf for their hateful agenda. What's more, it is distorting the European project, which is decreasingly about civil liberties and respect for the law. Unity at any price is not good enough. The only unity worth the name is that based on the very principles that are being breached by recent immigration proposals.

As a result of the crisis, the number of foreign workers in the EU has leveled off. The number of immigrants arriving and those returning to their countries of origin is more or less the same, and may well descend if the crisis deepens. The so-called immigration debate is nothing more than a cynical exercise aimed at hiding what is really at stake regarding the future of the EU: on the one hand, the principle of equality before the law; on the other, universal social rights. If both of these principles are breached, there is little to prevent other vulnerable groups from being discriminated against.