The Change Mariner

Eastern Europe's Immigration Challenge

International Herald Tribune:

The changes are small but plain to see: the stray African face on the subway, Ukrainians who clean and build, vegetable markets run not by Czechs but by Vietnamese who offer something truly foreign here - a plastic shopping bag free of charge.

These are the first signs of what many experts say may become yet another uncomfortable transformation in Eastern Europe: immigration.

Soon some of the nations of Eastern Europe may become magnets for immigration, both legal and illegal, in a marked shift for societies shut off for 40 years under communism and, for nearly a century before, much more likely to export cheap labor than to let it in.

The immediate lure is the expansion of the European Union on May 1, which will slowly break down the borders of its 10 new member countries, among them the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.

But most of these countries also face the same kind of demographic crisis as their European Union counterparts in the West, with aging and declining populations as people have fewer babies.

The crisis can be offset to some extent by immigration, though there is little support for that.

Posted by Bob King at May 3, 2004 05:10 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Area - Social - Demographics | Quadrant - Political | Quadrant - Social

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