Immigration to Europe 1223

Table 30.1. Foreign-Born Population and Percentage of
Total Population, 1995

Country Foreign-Born Population Percentage

Austria 724,000 9

Belgium 910,000^9

Denmark 223,000 4.2

Finland 69,000 1.3

France 3.5 million 6.3

Germany 7.1 million 8.8

Ireland 96,000 2.7

Italy 991,000 1.7

Luxembourg 138,000 33.4

Spain 500,000 1.2

Switzerland 1.3 million 18.9

United Kingdom 2 million 3.4

United States 24.6 million 10

Source: World Book, 1998 (Chicago: World Book, 1999), p. 245.

storm when he warned that unchecked immigration would swamp Britain.

When the economic recession began in the mid-1970s, other European

states began to enact more restrictive immigration policies. While many

foreign-born workers, recruited as single young men before the economic

recession, became permanent residents of the countries where they worked

(and became citizens), they were joined by hundreds of thousands of undoc­

umented clandestine workers.

Nations put into effect stricter border controls in an attempt to reduce

illegal immigration. EU nations have continued to build on the Schengen

Agreement (1985), which initiated the exchange of information about immi­

gration, moving toward common policies of border policing to crack down

on illegal immigration.

At the same time, the birthrates of many countries continued to decline.

Early in the twenty-first century, fourteen countries are no longer reproducing

their populations (with Italy and Spain leading the way, followed by Germany

and Sweden); in other countries, population growth is zero, or not far above

that. At the end of the twentieth century, economic uncertainty was closely

related to the continued fall in the number of births. The birthrate now shows

few signs of reversing the trend of decline. Many Western European countries

will lose population without significant immigration, and their economies will

continue to require the labor of immigrants, legal and otherwise.

Many Europeans felt themselves overwhelmed by immigrants. In 1987,

foreign and minority prisoners accounted for one-third of those locked up

in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. In the 1990s, riots by—but also

against—immigrants (principally Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and