Redefining the immigrant

The toughness the French police showed in forcing them into the aircraft, pinning them down to the seats, forcibly fastening the seat belts and waiting in the plane till the doors were safely closed, however, did not conform to what we saw during our fortnight-long travel in Europe. On the train from Paris to Cologne, we had a group of semi-literate Tamil women from Sri Lanka as our fellow passengers. Their travel had been arranged by one of their relatives who was already employed in Cologne. In Europe, Tamil labourers are quite common. The family with whom I stayed at Hurth on the outskirts of Cologne had a part-time Tamil servant to help in their daily chores. On the way to Bonn, my host showed us a sprawling agricultural farm where a large number of Polish workers were engaged. As in Kerala, farming is uneconomical in Germany because of the high cost of labour.

Immigrants, particularly from East Europe, are a common sight all over West Europe. We saw them plucking weeds in a tulip farm in the Netherlands, where exports of flowers fetch the country, with the most vibrant economy, upwards of two billion US dollars. They can also be seen on the farms of Great Britain. Almost all the hawkers selling umbrellas it was pouring that day and memorabilia and manning soft drink stalls in the indistinguishable area where Italy ends and the Vatican begins were Bangladeshis. A fellow Indian visitor was surprised of learning that a Taj Mahal Hotel was actually run by a Bangladeshi, and not an Indian. quot;I chose the name Taj Mahal because there is nothing in Bangladesh I could name my hotel after.quot;

Despite the visible antagonism the French police showed towards the quot;Indianquot; immigrants, the fact is that Europe cannot do without immigrants on account of a host of factors like negative population growth rate, high cost of labour, ageing population and the unwillingness of the local people to do certain kinds of jobs. Thus they require immigrants to keep the engine of growth moving. The Economist estimates that the European Union alone needs to import 1.6 million migrants a year to simply keep its working-age population stable between now and the year 2050.

After the Second World War, it was to the Turks that the Germans turned to remove all the debris and rebuild their nation. It is, however, a different matter that the xenophobic neo-Nazis often find in the Turks an easy prey. Certain provisions in the Basic Law of Germany facilitate flow of immigrants from East Europe, who are assured of German citizenship if they can prove that they or their forefathers were of German origin. Even so not many are keen to leave their native places. Most of them prefer to go to Germany and other countries in the European Union for work and then return to their own hearth like the Bihari labourers returning to their state after the sowing or harvesting operation is over in Punjab.

While Europe cannot do without immigrants, Europeans are worried about the aliens swarming their countryside, uprooting all that they consider sacred and distinct to their history and culture. It was disconcerting to listen to my host, who is a naturalised citizen, complaining about how the heavy taxes he was paying went to feed asylum-seekers in Germany. Yet, he could not manage without the help of the Tamil servant, who could indeed be an illegal immigrant. He did not deem it necessary to verify. It was this kind of public opinion that the Christian Democratic candidate in this week8217;s election in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Juergen Ruettgers, sought to exploit. Little did he know that his nasty comments on Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder8217;s plan, endorsed by his coalition government, to give visas to 20,000 software engineers from India will tie him in knots. Ruettgers argued that Germany should train its children in software rather than import Indians. quot;Kinder statt Inder! children, instead ofIndians he said. For one thing, there are not enough children in Germany to train and, for another, Germany has a lot to do to catch up with a country like India with regard to information and computer technology. To cite just one instance, my host8217;s daughter, who has her own Internet-linked computer at home and in school, showed her deficiency when she typed the English letters quot;dotquot; in a Yahoo address I dictated to her. Small wonder that it is easier to find a cyber cafe in a Tamil Nadu village than anywhere in Europe.

Ruettgers may not be aware of this deficiency but his voters do as the drubbing the Christian Democrats received in the elections, the results of which were announced on Monday, shows. The Social Democrats won the state, known as the industrial heart of Germany because of its blast furnaces and coal mines, with 42.8 per cent votes against 37 per cent secured by the Christian Democrats. It might have been a surprise for Ruettgers that the high German salary has not enthused Indian software engineers, who are more keen on migrating to the US, rather than his country. But then why blame him when the leader of Britain8217;s opposition Conservative Party, William Hague, screams that quot;bogus asylum-seekersquot; are quot;floodingquot; the country? Back in India, those who complain about Bangladeshis colonising parts of East Delhi do not realise that it is they who keep the city clean by picking rags.

Again, it is the migrants from Nepal who clean most cars in Delhi every morning and safeguard residential colonies. Or, take the case of the Chakma refugees in Arunachal Pradesh. Every now and then the All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union comes out with statements demanding the immediate deportation of the Chakma refugees settled in the state. But visit Changlang district, which has the largest concentration of the Chakmas and one would find that the Chakmas are so much in demand as labourers and they produce so much vegetables that the Arunachalis cannot simply live without them. The phenomenon of the immigrant doing better than the local is almost universal. Come to think of it, if the deportees who travelled with us had been able to evade the French police, they too would have produced yet another rags-to-riches story. Alas, that was not to be as the Delhi Police took them into their custody as soon as we reached Delhi.