Immigration

Immigration is the process through which individuals become residents in a new country of settlement. People migrate for a variety of reasons, and individual states have their own legal frameworks governing the immigration process. Immigration commonly refers to a permanent move, where one becomes a resident and a citizen of the country, rather than a visit or temporary period of settlement for work reasons, for example. This permanence helps distinguish immigration from the more general term migration, which covers a wider variety of experiences.

Historically, the process of immigration has been of great social, economic, and cultural benefit to states and has in many cases seen the development of multicultural societies. The immigration experience is long and varied with many modern states being characterized by a wide variety of cultures and ethnicities that have derived from previous periods of immigration. In the postwar period, immigration was largely the result of the refugee movement following World War II and, during the 1950s and 1960s, the end of colonization across Asia and Africa. Immigration from these areas to former imperial centers, such as the United Kingdom and France, increased. In the United Kingdom, for example, the 1948 British Nationality Act gave citizens in the former colonial territories of the Commonwealth (a potential figure of 800 million) the right of British nationality. After World War II, immigrant workers, or guest workers, played a vital role in the rebuilding of Europe's infrastructure by working in heavy industry, in health services, and in transport. However, immigrants suffered discrimination during this time, and this has contributed in some countries to the isolation of ethnic groups and minority communities. Although some states attempted to deal with the social exclusion of immigrants by limiting future immigration, others approached it with a more inclusive “melting pot” approach, focusing on the amalgamation of diverse cultures into one coherent understanding of citizenship. This approach has been integral to the notion of citizenship in the United States, where immigrants taking U.S. citizenship swear allegiance to their new place of residence. Critics of this approach highlight the assimilation of diverse cultures and the repression of difference in the name of the state. Immigration is therefore closely related to citizenship and the social and political rights to which citizens of a state are entitled.

States maintain control of their borders and therefore are able to monitor and determine the number of immigrants who are able to remain permanently. This can vary across states, and in some areas, borders are more open than in others. In 1985, for example, European states signed an agreement in Schengen, Luxembourg, to end internal border checkpoints and controls, and subsequent European Union (EU) immigration and asylum law was agreed to by [Page 436]the European Council in Tampere, Finland, in 1999. European Community law therefore states that European Economic Area (EEA) nationals are given the right to live and work (right of residence) in other member states. In many states, this entitles newly arrived immigrants to public services (housing and social services, for example). In the United States, the mechanism for selecting legal immigrants is complex, but all legal immigration flows have at least three components—family (spouses, parents, and children of U.S. citizens), employment (containing many different categories including unskilled workers and investors), and humanitarian (including refugees and asylum seekers).

...