EU adopts an immigrant work permit but it is unlikely to surpass the US green card in appeal.

For generations of Indians, the colour of hope has been green; the US green card being the most coveted ticket to a better life. But the European Union (EU) is now attempting to tint the immigrant dream another hue, by introducing its own version of the American work permit: the blue card.

In May this year, the Council of the EU officially adopted the Blue Card Directive, which participating member states now have two years to put into practice. The scheme is the end product of much hand-wringing in Europe as its population ages and economy stagnates.

America’s youth, dynamism and creative energy is often contrasted to European inertia and inflexibility. One major reason for this discrepancy, the EU argues, is the differential ability of the two entities to attract skilled immigrants.

Highly-qualified foreign workers make up only 1.7 per cent of the employed population within the EU, but the equivalent figure for Australia is nearly 10 per cent, over seven per cent in Canada and 3.2 per cent in the US. And it’s not as if Europe does not need these immigrants.

Studies predict an estimated shortfall of 20 million skilled and unskilled workers by 2030, the result in part of a steady decline in the EU’s working age population.

The blue card is also intended to cull the “right” kind of immigrants from the “wrong” sort for which the EU is currently a magnet.

The European Commission says some 85 per cent of global unskilled migrant labour heads to the EU, while only 5 per cent goes to the US. Given its redistributive welfare system, what Europe wants is an immigrant workforce that is a net financial contributor to, rather than a receiver from, this system.

TO APPLY for a blue card a professional will need either a university degree that has taken at least three years to complete or five years work experience in the relevant sector; a binding job offer from a European employer who will have to certify that the post cannot be filled from within the EU; and a salary offer that is at least 1.5 times the average prevailing wage in the country concerned.

In return, a Blue Card holder will be granted the same access to pensions, housing and healthcare as an EU citizen. Following an 18-month period she will be allowed to move to any other participating EU member country if she is able to secure a job there. The card will further entitle its holder to family reunification within six months – and spouses will be permitted to look for employment within the EU as well.

The card will have a validity of between one and four years after which it must be renewed.

If a card-holder were to lose his job he would have three months within which to find another.

So will the blue card succeed in transplanting the green one as the preferred URL of the developing world’s computer programmers?
“Unlikely,” says Jakob von Weizsäcker of the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. Weizsäcker is the father of the blue card having coined the term in a 2006 paper, but he is quick to distance himself from the final, watered-down form his issue has taken.

The potential potency of the blue card according to Weizsäcker would be the access it could promise a holder to not just a single European country but to the amalgamation of the 27 member states that comprise the EU. “An Indian engineer might not want to go to Vienna even if he were offered a job there because he might not speak German and his family may not like it. But were he to have the ability to move to the UK in the event of things not working out he would probably go ahead and accept the job. The internal mobility within the EU that the blue card would offer would give him an exit strategy.”

However, the Blue Card Directive as eventually adopted by the EU’s Council following two years of controversy-bogged discussions, does not assure a card holder the right to move from one EU country to another and, in fact, makes it “almost as tough to move within the EU as to reapply from the outside again”.

Immigration policy and sovereignty are perceived as deeply intertwined with the result that EU member states are notoriously wary of Brussels encroaching on this space. They have consequently retained the right to reject any application by a blue card holder, who will, in fact, have no legal right guaranteed at the European level to move within the Union, even after the initial 18-month period has elapsed.

The card holder will only have the right to apply for a transfer of job, an application that may or may not be accepted by the country the transfer is requested for.

“The Directive’s significance is therefore more symbolic of the EU’s commitment to attract more skilled workers than substantial,” says Weizsäcker.

Moreover, the UK, Ireland and Denmark have opted out the scheme, a factor that will also cripple its effectiveness especially since it is English-speaking countries that have a natural advantage when it comes to attracting skilled workers.

According to Weizsäcker most European countries have a falsely “mechanistic” view of labour markets. “They tend to think that ‘ok, so we have a shortage of x number of engineers this year and so we need to fill these positions but that once they are filled the problem is solved.’

But in fact jobs create more jobs and attracting qualified professionals could potentially transform an area into a hub of specialised excellence.”
The upshot of all the caveats the current avatar of the scheme is subject to, is that come 2011 the queues at blue card counters in European embassies around the world might be rather short.

And until the Directive acquires sharper teeth, blue is likely to flounder in its battle with green.

Pallavi Aiyar is the Brussels Correspondent of The Business Standard (India)
This article was published here before.