US: An immigration symposium at the US-Mexican border showed that neither Americans nor Europeans have a monopoly of wisdom over one of the hottest issues in today's world, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Can the US and EU learn anything from one another about dealing with the problem of illegal immigration? This was the subtext of an unusual gathering of American and European journalists as well as a handful of politicians in San Antonio, Texas, at the Fourth Annual Transatlantic Journalists' Forum.
San Antonio was an appropriate location to have a symposium on "Borders, Neighbourhoods and Political Landscapes in Europe and North America". Adjacent to the "cosmic frontier" with Mexico, the city has a large Hispanic population and a strong Spanish "feel" to it, quite apart from the name.
The event was held under the auspices of the German Marshall Fund of the USA and the European Commission. Washington-based, the German Marshall Fund was established in 1972 with a grant from the German government, when the legendary Willy Brandt was chancellor.
It was a gesture of appreciation for the reconstruction aid provided to post-war Germany through the Marshall Plan.
One of the main speakers, EU ambassador to the US John Bruton, highlighted the very different approach to border states and neighbouring countries adopted by the EU and the US.
Whereas the US, Canada and Mexico have set up the North Atlantic Free Trade Area (Nafta), the EU goes well beyond trade co-operation with its neighbours, even those which have no immediate prospect of joining the Union.
As the former taoiseach said: "We take an interest in the internal operations of their states."
Under the European Neighbourhood Programme, the EU encourages neighbours like the Ukraine or Moldova to develop democratic institutions based on the rule of law.
The budget allocation has been increased from €7 billion to €15 billion, no small amount, "but it is an incentive-based programme", Mr Bruton said. The ultimate incentive, of course, is full EU membership. This has already been extended to many of the post-communist states and two more - Bulgaria and Romania - are set to join the Union by 2007.
Looking to Europe for inspiration, former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda felt something similar to the EU in its early phase of development was needed on his side of the Atlantic. Nafta was insufficient: "We do have to shoot for something like a North American economic community."
According to Mr Castaneda, who is running for the Mexican presidency as an independent, "Nafta was oversold". There were divided views as to whether it accelerated moves towards full democracy and human rights in Mexico, a country that has only recently emerged from one-party rule. On the economic level, productivity in Mexico remained "flat".
"Nafta has not been a factor of significant economic growth." Nafta was supposed to reduce immigration but quite the opposite happened. There's more immigration from Mexico to the US today than ever before in history."
With rising immigration came increased security risks. "The first al-Qaeda guy that they catch coming in from Mexico and we have a major problem in Mexico."
Echoing the terminology of Brussels, Mr Castaneda favours "broadening, deepening" the North American inter-relationship. The US stood to gain better security, for example, from a Schengen-type travel arrangement. Irish travellers to the US go through "pre-clearance" at Dublin and Shannon airports and similar facilities could be set up jointly by the three North American countries on Mexico's southern border with South America and the rest of the world.
The gain for Mexico would be a better deal on immigration to the US. "Without security, nothing is sellable in the US, but without immigration, nothing is sellable in Mexico."
For example, at present an average of one person a day was killed at the US-Mexican border.
However the view that everything in the European garden is rosy was challenged by Ukrainian TV journalist Yevhen Hlibovytskyy, who told last week's symposium that the EU should be "ashamed" of its neighbourhood policy because it placed such very different countries as Belarus and Ukraine in the same basket.
"Brussels is about procedures, it's not about resolving issues," he said. Without a clear pathway to EU membership, Ukraine would be doomed to live "not in a global world but only in part of the world and that is basically the post-Soviet space, full of risks and dictatorship regimes".
Hlibovytskyy painted a stark picture of immigration from Ukraine to the EU countries. There was a significant "brain drain" of qualified people as well as a massive outflow of sex slaves: young Ukrainians conned into going West in the expectation of a proper job but ending up as part of the human traffic, in Donald Rumsfeld's terminology, from "old" to "new" Europe.
In addition, the visa application process was riddled with corruption. While all this was going on, Ukraine was trying to discover its national identity in the wake of last year's Orange Revolution. "We are trying to find our identity and find out who we are . . . and globalise at the same time," said Hlibovytskyy, who is president of the Kiev Independent Media trade union.
But however grim the situation in Europe as regards immigration, it pales in comparison to some of the things that are happening on the US-Mexican border.
CNN correspondent Casey Wian pointed to a deep ambivalence in US attitudes and a lack of honesty in public debate. The vast majority wanted tighter border controls yet were happy to hire what are officially known as "illegal aliens" as cheap labour in their homes or businesses.
There were between 10 million and 20 million "illegals" in the US. Despite the security crackdown after September 11th, "millions of illegal aliens continue to stream across the border every year, hundreds are dying in the desert, countless others are being robbed, raped and ripped off by smugglers".
At the same time, "our neighbour Mexico sometimes appears to be actually encouraging illegal immigration. Many make the argument that Mexico is using the US as a pressure valve to dissuade its impoverished population from rebelling."
Wian's summary of the position in the US could also be applied to Europe, when he said it was hard to see a solution to the problem when the society was so "divided and dysfunctional over the issue" of illegal immigration and the accompanying headache of border security.