Europe Slams the Door

By Bruce W. Nelan

The grassy square in the middle of Slubice, a Polish town on the German border, is known locally as "the Bermuda Triangle." Most mornings, but particularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays when traffic across the frontier is heavy and the guards are busy, crowds of hopeful immigrants from Eastern Europe creep out of the woods and doorways where they have spent the night. Men, women and children straggle into the square to rendezvous with their "tour guides," the smugglers who will help them disappear into the West -- for fees ranging from $50 to $200.

In another village 20 miles away, Polish entrepreneurs are carrying on a lively trade in rubber dinghies that will ferry migrants across the Oder River to Germany. Farther south, the activities of similar "travel agencies" directed or supervised by criminal gangs crowd the towns along the Czech- & German border. Pilsen is so jammed with migrants from Bosnia and Croatia that its native Czech residents call it "Yugoslav City." That is partly a misnomer because while many of those in transit are from war-ravaged segments of the former Yugoslavia, other thousands are Bulgarians, Romanians, Turks and Russians. All of them, though, have something in common: they are desperate to get into Germany and to the other prosperous European Community countries they see as the promised land, and they are increasingly less likely to succeed.

West European governments are now more determined than ever to keep the foreigners out, and they are beginning to use regulations, deportations and gunboats to do so. The poor but eager migrants have become the main targets of murderous racial attacks on foreigners and xenophobic political movements in a dozen countries. With reception facilities overburdened, unemployment rates climbing to a national average of 10% and voters shouting in protest, Western governments are calling a halt. From Sweden in the north to Greece in the south, the Continent echoes with the sound of doors slamming shut.

Their fears are not unfounded. The U.N. Population Fund last week released its annual report, which confirms that illegal migration is rapidly increasing. "From 1980 to 1992 alone," the report estimates, "15 million people entered the West European countries as migrants." Other experts suggest that 5 million to 10 million people are planning to leave the states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Half of them hope to head for Germany.

The U.N. report carefully observes that these migrants are not refugees, though there is considerable confusion on this issue. The word refugee is used regularly -- but mistakenly -- to describe anyone driven to leave home for any reason. But most national governments and international organizations recognize as refugees only those who live in "fear of political persecution if they return" to their homeland. As a result, many migrants who wish only to work and improve their life claim falsely to be refugees and ask for political asylum. Last year 700,000 of them applied to West European countries for asylum -- 438,000 in Germany alone. "I risked my life to get here," says Anton Lupu, a 33-year-old Romanian painter who made it across the border from Poland and has applied for asylum in Eisenhuttenstadt, Germany. "We didn't come to steal, only to work respectably. The difference between Germany and Romania is the difference between heaven and earth."

Though many will not say so in public, Europeans generally agree with French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, who declares that France "no longer wants to be a country of immigration" but wants to move "toward zero immigration." France, a country of 57 million, is host to almost 4 million legal immigrants and as many as 500,000 illegals. The new conservative government in Paris has moved quickly in Pasqua's desired direction. Last month it increased the requirements foreigners must meet to acquire French citizenship. A second step, restricting the rights of legal immigrants, was approved in the first of two readings by both houses of parliament. A third measure gives police the power to stop foreigners and check for proper documentation. How would the police know for sure someone is a foreigner and thus susceptible to inspection? Suggested the bill's author, Alain Marsaud of the neo-Gaullist Rassemblement pour la Republique: "If you are reading the New York Times in the street, you may be presumed to be a foreigner." With classic logic, Pasqua argued, "How do you recognize a foreigner? By the fact that he is not French. How do you know he is not French? I answer: Ask him for his papers."

Germany, having taken in 887,000 asylum seekers during the past three years and 224,000 in the first six months of this year, has resolutely moved to stanch the flow. Without declaring it as such, Bonn has adopted a zero- immigration policy. The Bundestag has amended the Basic Law, Germany's constitution, to restrict the almost universal right of asylum it formerly -- and proudly -- provided. Effective July 1, economic migrants, who have made up about 95% of the more than 1 million who have arrived since 1990, are no longer to be treated as refugees. Border patrols have been beefed up, and the new law provides for the immediate expulsion of illegal migrants.

Under an agreement between Germany and Romania, deportation flights to Bucharest take off almost every day from Berlin. In the first five months of this year, 21,800 Romanians were returned. Germany has signed similar agreements with Bulgaria and Poland and most recently with the Czech Republic, which has taken back 18,000 people who entered Germany illegally in the first quarter of 1993. The treaties provide for cash payments from Germany to help countries absorb the returnees. Poland, for example, is to receive $71 million by the end of next year.

Germany's return policy follows guidelines agreed upon by E.C. immigration ministers last December, when the principle of "first safe country" was approved. That means that a bona fide refugee, fearing for his life, must seek asylum in the first safe country he reaches. If he does not and instead enters an E.C. state, he could be pushed back to the last safe country he was in before arriving inside the E.C.

The list of "safe countries" conveniently includes such eastern states as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Thus not only can Germany send unwanted arrivals back to those states, but the "safe" countries will now be much more careful about letting migrants cross their borders lest they be stuck with them. Hungary, for example, turned back 1.3 million people from farther east over the past year because Austria and Germany will not accept them. Austria, in turn, has tried to stop Bosnians from using it as a route into Germany. Measures adopted in Vienna this year make it much harder for anyone entering Austria to live and work there, and this month new regulations go into effect that strictly monitor the length of time even legal workers may remain.

Italian officials insist they do not intend to go the way of France and Germany, but many of them are worried because the country is host to about 800,000 legal and at least 300,000 illegal foreign workers, even as unemployment heads toward 10%. Says Social Affairs Minister Fernanda Contri: "We need to work on the idea of a certain number of foreigners allowed in, a fixed number each year." To guard against a return of the Albanian boat people who were sent back two years ago, the Italian navy is patrolling the Adriatic. The powerful opposition group, the Northern League, calls unabashedly for zero immigration. "There should be an end to all this false pity," says Gianfranco Salmoiraghi, a League official in Milan. "Immigrants are caught in a form of slavery, exploited by unscrupulous employers to accept lower wages, thus depriving Italians of work."

The gates of Fortress Europe moved closer to the locked position last week when Sweden and Denmark announced new immigration restrictions that require Bosnians, as well as Croats, Macedonians and Serbs, to arrive with a valid visa. At the same time, Sweden has told 40,000 Bosnians now in residence that they can stay, but Denmark says its 14,000 Bosnians will be sent home when the civil war in the former Yugoslavia ends. The Danes should not hold their breath.

Greece, meanwhile, is rounding up and repatriating thousands of Albanians. Explains Foreign Minister Michalis Papakonstantinou: "Because of our tolerance, we have been swamped by Albanians." Officials in Athens estimate that the country now holds 200,000 illegal Albanians among 500,000 workers who have slipped in from other countries.

Britain's immigration laws have been tough for decades, but a bill now before Parliament would tighten the requirements for political asylum and take away the right of tourists and students to appeal when their request for an extension is refused. Under pressure from the E.C., Spain requires visas for arrivals from Morocco. The Spanish have persuaded Morocco to take back its own citizens as well as others who illegally enter their country across the mouth of the Mediterranean.

Residents of the poor countries and the former communist states are willing to do almost anything to reach the lands of opportunity in the West. Citizens of former Warsaw Pact countries thought that political freedom and the collapse of barbed-wire borders throughout Eastern Europe would bring them the opportunity to move around the world unhindered. Their expectation collides with the fact that many West Europeans simply do not want to encourage immigration into their ethnically homogeneous nation-states. The only foreigners who have a right to live in Germany today are those who have been granted refugee status or those who hold valid work permits, most of whom come in on "guest worker" programs. Germany has no immigration program in the sense that the U.S. or Canada or Australia has, with rules about moving in and becoming a citizen. Germany has only recently begun to consider ways to make it easier for thousands of ethnic Turks born and educated in the country to become German citizens.

Hopeful East Europeans may not be aware of that. On the grass of Slubice's Bermuda Triangle stands a group of well-dressed young Romanians -- none really the victim of political persecution, discussing the newly erected barriers they face. "How exactly," one asks, "can you immigrate legally into Germany?" The frustrating answer: "As of now, you can't."

With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris, Leonora Dodsworth/Rome and Nomi Morris/Berlin, with other bureaus